This pilot program supports individuals and organizations in providing meaningful arts experiences for Minnesotans within their communities. Funds may be used for a variety of arts programming such as creating and/or presenting concerts, plays, tours, exhibitions, arts festivals, public art, or other kinds of activities that provide Minnesotans opportunities to engage in arts activities that are instilled into community or public life.
| Grantee, City |
Grant Amount |
10th Wave Chamber Music Collective, Spring Lake Park | $ 30,800 | | 10th Wave Chamber Music Collective will collaborate with composer Mary Ellen Childs and puppeteer Oanh Vu to present an innovative performance that seamlessly integrates live music with captivating shadow and 3D puppetry, including rod and Japanese cart puppets. |
125 Live, Rochester | $ 30,000 | | 125 Live will offer weekly and monthly concerts for local seniors and adults to listen, dance, socialize, and make connections that they otherwise cannot make. |
Advocating Change Together, Inc, Saint Paul | $ 25,000 | | Advocating Change Together's Side-By-Side People's Chorus (comprised of individuals with and without disabilities) will perform for over 2,500 community members in public concerts, changing perceptions of disability. |
Aitkin County Friends of the Arts, Aitkin | $ 35,000 | | Aitkin County Friends of the Arts will host local, regional, and national touring musical and performing arts acts, transforming Aitkin County into a music and performing arts destination. |
An Opera Theatre, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | An Opera Theatre will produce the Midwest premiere of [opera captions] by Jay Afrisando, a theatrical music work that explores the creative application of closed captioning. |
The Anderson Center at Tower View, Red Wing | $ 34,750 | | The Anderson Center at Tower View will offer arts experiences to Minnesotans with its Public Artist Residency Program, Minnesota Children's Book Festival, Red Wing Area Studio Tour, and a concert series, serving the interests and needs of Red Wing area residents. |
April Sellers Dance Collective, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | April Sellers Dance Collective will celebrate 25 years of queer dance making and strengthen queer communities with performances and residencies in Ely, Morris, and New York Mills with the Born to Love Again: April Sellers Dance Collective by Bus tour. |
The Armory Arts & Events Center, Park Rapids | $ 34,999 | | The Armory Arts & Events Center will host an event series that includes three concerts, four artist talks, exhibitions, and open studio events that celebrate the diversity of art and foster community around the arts. |
Art of the Rural, Winona | $ 24,900 | | Art of the Rural will present artists and visual art experiences, including artist talks, that express life along the Mississippi River in Minnesota. |
Artistry, Bloomington | $ 35,000 | | Artistry will increase access to arts programming for older adults by offering additional matinees, transportation and tickets, dance and art classes for seniors, and a production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown! with an all senior cast. |
The Bach Society of Minnesota, Saint Paul | $ 35,000 | | The Bach Society of Minnesota will present 150 Mobile Mini-Concerts and two larger Family Concerts in urban and rural Minnesota neighborhoods, using parks, senior communities, libraries, and community centers as nontraditional Baroque music venues. |
City of Battle Lake, Battle Lake | $ 20,000 | | The City of Battle Lake's Art Advisory Committee will create a self-guided 1.5-mile tour of thirty of the city's most prominent points of interest, including artist led community created works of art, mosaics, national register sites, and sculptures. |
Be That Neighbor, Minneapolis | $ 16,575 | | Be That Neighbor will stage Hope 612, a play that gives voice to youth from the Cedar-Riverside community and young people who have experienced homelessness. Written and performed by these young artists, the play delves into issues that matter most to them, while offering a vision of hope for a more positive future. |
Bemidji Community Theater, Bemidji | $ 35,000 | | Bemidji Community Theater will offer children the opportunity to view a live theater production of The Sword in the Stone, complete with costuming, singing, and dancing. |
Benedictine Living Community-New Brighton, New Brighton | $ 35,000 | | Benedictine Living Community-New Brighton will partner with Benedictine Living Community-Minneapolis in hosting artist led residencies and performances for older adults living at those two skilled nursing communities. |
Bebe Zahara Benet, Minneapolis | $ 25,000 | | Benet will tour their original one-person show, Expand the Queendom, to five towns in greater Minnesota. |
Nikki Bettcher Erickson, Willmar | $ 14,625 | | Bettcher Erickson's Expanding Theatre Experiences project will provide meaningful performing arts related experiences to youth in rural Minnesota to build confidence, community connections, and a love of theater. |
BIPOC Foodways Alliance, Minneapolis | $ 25,000 | | BIPOC Foodways Alliance will host seven BIPOC Foodways Alliance Storytelling Tables with documentation using video, photography, and written content. |
Bird Island Cultural Centre, Bird Island | $ 20,924 | | Bird Island Cultural Centre will promote the works of Minnesota artists in ten gallery exhibitions, each a month long, with a hands-on art appreciation experience for challenged adults. |
Bluff Country Studio Art Tour, Lanesboro | $ 17,300 | | Bluff Country Studio Art Tour will plan, organize, and present a high quality studio art tour experience benefitting the residents and artists in greater Minnesota. |
Border CrosSing, Saint Paul | $ 35,000 | | Border CrosSing will present two choral concerts that celebrate Latinx music, culture, and history. These programs will feature Latinx folk song settings, new works for choir, and groundbreaking Mexican works featuring percussion quartet Versus 8. |
Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Minnesota, Saint Cloud | $ 25,000 | | Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Minnesota's Youth Arts Initiative will provide quality arts experiences in the areas of dance, visual arts, digital arts, and fashion/sewing to strengthen pride in self-identity, foster respect, and empower youth to use their creative voice. |
Boys of America-Finnish American Brass Band, Northfield | $ 19,900 | | Boys of America-Finnish American Brass Band will celebrate its 35th anniversary in 2025 with a series of presentations observing traditional Scandinavian ethnic holidays such as Christmas, Finnish Independence, Saint Urho's Day, and Vappu. |
Brainerd Baxter Youth Center, Brainerd | $ 24,000 | | The Brainerd Baxter Youth Center will present The Ripple Effect, a six part music and visual arts experience from April through September 2025. Each event will showcase local performers, offer hands-on education, and promote community engagement. |
Leanna V. Browne, Minneapolis | $ 25,000 | | Browne will develop and premiere a new dance work rooted in Umfundalai, as well as copresent weeklong workshops, classes, and activities leading up to the premiere. |
Blayze J. Buseth, Fergus Falls | $ 24,800 | | Buseth will offer an immersive five-week advanced pottery workshop series covering the wheel, trimming, carving, bonsai study, and glazing. |
Carifest, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Twin Cities Carifest will present its annual festival to celebrate and share the many cultures of the Caribbean. Presented along the banks of the Mississippi, the day-long event connects artists with diverse communities via island music, dance, arts, and food. |
Rocky Casillas Aguirre, Nerstrand | $ 20,750 | | Casillas Aguirre will hold their first solo visual art exhibition, U are the Universe, at the Northfield Arts Guild and Mercado Local. The show will explore mental health from a Latine perspective. |
The Cedar, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | The Cedar Cultural Center's second Cedar in the Summer concert series will showcase culturally and musically diverse artists across eight weeks in 2025 on its Cedar-Riverside neighborhood plaza. |
Center for Performing Arts Minneapolis, Minneapolis | $ 24,750 | | Center for the Performing Arts will celebrate its 30th anniversary in 2025 with workshops in culturally specific dance and music, culminating in a cross-cultural performing arts festival. |
Cerenity Senior Care-Humboldt, Saint Paul | $ 26,461 | | Cerenity Senior Care-Humboldt and White Bear Lake will offer eight performances and 36 art residency sessions to more than 100 seniors cared for in its nursing homes and assisted living apartments in 2025. |
Chamber Music Live, Houston | $ 35,000 | | Chamber Music Live will present the Apollo Music Festival, a classical chamber music festival in southeastern Minnesota from August 14-23, 2025. The festival will feature eight concerts, student master classes, a student recital, a local artists exhibition, and more. |
Children's Museum of Southern Minnesota, Mankato | $ 24,000 | | Children's Museum of Southern Minnesota will enhance its weekly Art Explorers program, a make and take art experience where children create in clay, pencils and shading, mosaics, wall tapestries, nature art, and fiber arts. |
CHOICE Unlimited, Duluth | $ 35,000 | | CHOICE, Unlimited's The ARTS Program is dedicated to creating artistic outlets and experiences for people with disabilities; providing platforms for self-expression and an opportunity to educate the public to the incredible possibilities all individuals possess. |
Citizens for Backus AB, International Falls | $ 35,000 | | The Backus Community Center will offer five diverse arts programs to residents of northern Minnesota. |
Clean River Partners, Northfield | $ 31,250 | | Clean River Partners will organize, curate, and host the Downstream Environmental Film Festival in four small communities in southern Minnesota. Participants will experience high quality local, national, and international films. |
City of Clearbrook, Clearbrook | $ 35,000 | | The City of Clearbrook will engage its residents in a storytelling experience that will both touch and change them, providing access to discover that what connects us is deeper than what separates us, while sharing stories with each other. |
Deidre A. Cochran, Minneapolis | $ 12,100 | | Cochran will work with a diverse group of Twin Cities actors and creatives to present two staged readings of IDA, a new play set in historic Minneapolis. |
COLLIDE Theatrical Dance Company, Saint Paul | $ 35,000 | | COLLIDE Theatrical Dance Company will provide diverse Twin Cities youth with enriching experiences through student matinees and supplementary educational programs. |
Catherine L. Colsrud, Sandstone | $ 25,000 | | Colsrud will offer three ribbon skirt making classes for Indigenous participants, engaging underserved communities in making art, developing creative expression, and healing.
|
Combustible Company, Minneapolis | $ 17,700 | | Combustible Company will produce the world premiere of Waking Miss Daisy. This new theatrical work uses immersive staging, video projections, movement, and text to interrogate and reimagine Alfred Uhry's play Driving Miss Daisy from the perspective of Hoke Coleburn. |
Contempo Physical Dance, Shoreview | $ 35,000 | | Contempo Physical Dance will host an international choreography residency, which will include a series of workshops, premiere of a full-length work, and a subsequent tour to bring Brazilian contemporary hip hop dance to new audiences. |
Copper Street Brass, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Copper Street Brass will use live music and social interaction to enrich the lives of seniors in care facilities, with a focus on those facing dementia, through its creative aging program Soundtracks. |
CornerStone, Frazee | $ 35,000 | | CornerStone will offer live music for "Fridays in Frazee" in the summer of 2025. |
Creative Healing Space, Worthington | $ 25,000 | | Creative Healing Space will host a range of youth focused participatory arts events and workshops to promote mental well-being, foster creativity, and build community among members of Nobles County and surrounding areas. |
Crescendo Youth Orchestra, Hibbing | $ 35,000 | | Crescendo Youth Orchestra will continue to serve over one hundred members on a weekly basis through lessons, rehearsals, performances, and greeting the public at its location in downtown Hibbing. |
Cuban American Youth Orchestra, Minneapolis | $ 34,600 | | Cuban American Youth Orchestra will present En Camino a Cuba, a program that brings audiences through the rich cultural history of Cuba through educational performances by the Havana Quartet. |
Cory M. Dack, Duluth | $ 25,000 | | Dack will create a documentary film and takeaway coloring pages about her source to sea canoe paddle of the Mississippi River. Dack will present these artistic works at community screenings throughout Minnesota. |
Isabella Dawis, Minneapolis | $ 25,000 | | Dawis will develop and present an innovative audio story exploring land acquisition motivated by climate change, supplemented by a tour of script readings and audience talk backs in Duluth, with Asian American and Pacific Islanders theater and audio arts partners. |
Department of Public Transformation, Granite Falls | $ 35,000 | | Department of Public Transformation will present a series of community arts events at The YES! House in Granite Falls featuring Minnesota rural and urban artists alongside local residents. |
Diamond, Laporte | $ 24,200 | | Diamond will host four summer art and music festivals at Rail River Folk School in Bemidji. These festivals will showcase her art while also providing a platform for other artists to exhibit their work and for musicians to share their talents with the community. |
Division of Indian Work, Minneapolis | $ 34,900 | | Division of Indian Work will partner with New Native Theatre for its 2025 youth summer camp. Open to the public and designed for Native Americans living in the Twin Cities, students practice conventional theater skills led by Native instructors and professional artists. |
Dolina Polish Folk Dancers, Minneapolis | $ 25,000 | | The Dolina Polish Folk Dancers will learn choreography of the Lemko-Rusyn region, offering workshops and performances in five rural communities. These events will celebrate the rich heritage of song, dance, and cultural clothing shared by many Minnesotans. |
Benjamin Domask-Ruh, Rochester | $ 25,000 | | Domask-Ruh will produce the Rural Circus Performance Circuit, touring three circus artists to three rural Minnesota towns to cultivate appreciation for circus arts, while connecting with communities through free performances and workshops. |
Eagan Men's Chorus, Eagan | $ 11,100 | | Eagan Men's Chorus will prepare and perform music for concerts at ten or more senior residences and veteran homes in the Twin Cities metropolitan area. |
East Metro Symphony Orchestra, Woodbury | $ 27,000 | | East Metro Symphony Orchestra will provide three full orchestra performances and eight small ensemble performances at senior living residences. |
East Side Arts Council, Saint Paul | $ 24,000 | | East Side Arts Council will bring ten arts experiences in music, poetry, bookmaking, puppetry, and dance, to six east Saint Paul schools. |
Ely Winter Festival, Ely | $ 22,350 | | The 2026 Ely Winter Festival will engage the public in a Snow Sculpting Symposium, an Art Walk, an arts and crafts marketplace, musical performances, classes in traditional arts and crafts, and other arts activities in the middle of winter. |
Emerging Curators Institute, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | The Emerging Curators Institute will support the next generation of Minnesota curators, including BIPOC, Latine, 2SLGBTQIA+, neurodiverse, and disability identified individuals, through presentations and exhibitions of their curatorial fellowship projects across the Twin Cities. |
Exposed Brick Theatre, Saint Paul | $ 35,000 | | Exposed Brick Theatre will produce the Through Our Eyes 2 Festival, featuring the work of six early career, BIPOC playwrights from Minnesota. |
Dominic B. Facio, Fergus Falls | $ 34,970 | | Facio, a creative placemaking artist, will maintain and expand their connection to rural Minnesota communities with an immersive multimedia musical production. |
Fairmont Opera House, Fairmont | $ 34,700 | | Fairmont Opera House will produce three youth theater educational camps for grades K-12 and one adult performance workshop, serving 125 Minnesotans of all ages. |
Flip the Script Festival, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Flip the Script Festival will present its sixth annual film festival in October 2025 featuring Queer films from Queer filmmakers around the globe. This festival is offered both in person and online to inspire the Queer community of Minnesota and their allies. |
The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library, Saint Paul | $ 25,000 | | The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library will present Moving Words: Writers Across Minnesota, working with the state's twelve regional library systems to increase community access to Minnesota Book Award winning and finalist writers. |
Frozen River Film Festival, Winona | $ 35,000 | | Frozen River Film Festival will celebrate the film arts with year-round arts programming and education and an annual documentary film festival with hybrid programming that combines live and virtual events that connect Minnesotans with filmmakers. |
Full Circle Theater Company, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Full Circle Theater will produce Martyna Majok's Pulitzer Prize winning Cost of Living at Park Square Theatre's Andy Boss stage in November 2025, centering intersectional artists and engaging over a thousand audience members. |
Good Thunder Reading Series, Mankato | $ 35,000 | | Good Thunder Reading Series at Minnesota State University Mankato will bring acclaimed authors to the region for public workshops, craft talks, and readings. |
Grand Marais Playhouse, Grand Marais | $ 35,000 | | The Grand Marais Playhouse will provide high quality theater and educational opportunities with, and for, Cook County residents and its visitors. |
Davi Gray, Minneapolis | $ 30,850 | | Gray, through their work with The ReEntry Lab, will present monthly Better Things 5x5 Readings and Open Mics, featuring diverse poets and writers, including formerly incarcerated writers, in Minneapolis. |
Molly B. Griffin, Minneapolis | $ 10,800 | | Griffin will host eight Picture Book Salon events where Minnesota writers and illustrators will gather to deepen their craft knowledge and find collaborators and critique partners in a supportive artistic community. |
Grove Area Percussion Boosters, Maple Grove | $ 30,835 | | Grove Area Percussion Boosters will present its music and dance show featuring over fifty youth performers to Minnesotans at Minnesota Percussion Association's regional events across the state. |
David A. Hamlow, Good Thunder | $ 7,600 | | Hamlow will work with the students of Hennepin Elementary School in Minneapolis on three unique recycled art projects promoting creative reuse, celebrating diverse viewpoints, and fostering school and community solidarity. |
Laura Harada, Minneapolis | $ 32,500 | | Harada will bring forty world music concerts to seniors in assisted living, memory care, and independent living housing throughout the Twin Cities region. |
Highpoint Center for Printmaking, Minneapolis | $ 34,622 | | Highpoint Center for Printmaking will present a two-day Print Fest featuring forty local printmakers, hands-on print demos, workshops, activities for all ages, and a gallery exhibition celebrating contemporary regional printmakers. |
Summer Hills-Bonczyk, Columbia Heights | $ 24,966 | | Hills-Bonczyk will present the Performance Art Intensive, a 7-day immersive retreat culminating in a public performance. A cast and crew of elders and LGBTQ+ young adults will cocreate a performance with 4,000 pounds of unfired clay. |
Historic Holmes Theatre, Detroit Lakes | $ 35,000 | | The Historic Holmes Theatre will continue to connect its region of greater Minnesota with unique art experiences and engage artists in community outreach activities. |
Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County, Moorhead | $ 13,015 | | Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County will present the exhibit The Unchosen Ones, centering rural fair culture, along with three thematically related public presentations and artist talks. |
History Theatre, Saint Paul | $ 28,000 | | History Theatre will present a premiere of Whoa Nellie: Outlaw King of the Wild Middle West, engaging with new audiences and community partners to highlight a lack of gender and queer representation in historic theatrical storytelling. |
Hubbard County Developmental Achievement Center, Inc, Park Rapids | $ 30,999 | | Hubbard County Developmental Achievement Center, Inc. will offer a range of arts workshops, classes, and performance opportunities for adults with disabilities, increasing creativity, cognitive skills, and physical functioning. |
Hutchinson Center for the Arts, Hutchinson | $ 35,000 | | Hutchinson Center for the Arts will present arts and cultural programming to the community, including Lifetime Arts for older populations, and a visual arts exhibition program. |
IMCCM, Saint Cloud | $ 35,000 | | Independent Music Collaborative of Central Minnesota will continue to provide all ages sober and safe live music experiences, expanding music education workshops for emerging musical artists. |
In Black Ink, Saint Paul | $ 35,000 | | In Black Ink will support Black writers and publishing arts professionals and connect them with readers, learners, and listeners through print, public gatherings that welcome all audiences, and writing workshops for emerging Black writers. |
Indian Music Society of Minnesota, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | The Indian Music Society of Minnesota will produce a series of six in person classical (Asian) Indian music concerts and two lecture-demonstrations that will share and showcase Indian music and cultural heritage with Minnesota audiences. |
Interact, Saint Paul | $ 35,000 | | Interact Center for the Visual and Performing Arts will present a season of high quality, professional visual arts and theater by artists with disabilities, presenting in galleries and performance venues throughout the metro area and the state, and on its global virtual gallery. |
International Friendship Through the Performing Arts, Eagan | $ 35,000 | | International Friendship Through the Performing Arts will present seventeen concerts featuring eighteen musicians from eight diverse cultures and musical genres at ten retirement communities across the Twin Cities and greater Minnesota. |
Jazz Access, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Jazz Access will present outdoor concerts at Rondo Plaza, Capri Theater Plaza, and Arlington Hills Community Center Plaza, providing an opportunity for diverse communities to gather and enjoy top local jazz artists. |
Jungle Theater, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Jungle Theater will produce and present the new play, Fast FWD Motions, about a Hmong-American women's volleyball team by Jungle Theater artist cohort member Katie Ka Vang. |
Kicks Band of Fargo Moorhead, Moorhead | $ 13,957 | | Kicks Band of Fargo Moorhead will host a summer park concert series in Moorhead and Detroit Lakes. |
Rachael E. Kilgour, Duluth | $ 7,300 | | Kilgour will present her My Father Loved Me performance and artist talk in ten rural Minnesota towns. |
La Grande Bande, Gaylord | $ 35,000 | | La Grande Bande will present world-class live classical music concerts and educational arts experiences for audiences in greater Minnesota. |
Lakes Area Music Festival, Brainerd | $ 35,000 | | The Lakes Area Music Festival will produce more than twenty-five community outreach engagements uniquely designed for underserved communities of rural central Minnesota, who wouldn't otherwise have access to professional live classical music. |
Lakes Bluegrass Festival, Pine River | $ 35,000 | | Lakes Bluegrass Festival will celebrate and preserve uniquely American roots bluegrass music with live main stage music performances, interactive workshops, and impromptu jam sessions. |
Lanesboro Arts, Lanesboro | $ 35,000 | | Lanesboro Arts will offer an artist residency program for artists of color, with culminating public workshops and events that sustains and amplifies its vision for communities-especially rural communities-to embrace artists as culture bearers, community builders, and problem solvers. |
Ying Li, Eagan | $ 25,000 | | Li will produce a Chinese dance gala featuring 120 local dancers to celebrate the 2026 spring festival. |
Life-sized Meme Productions, Minnetonka | $ 25,000 | | Life-sized Meme Productions will present nine Twin Cities events, including the North Star Nerdlesque Festival, and incorporate related educational opportunities. |
Little Theatre of Owatonna, Owatonna | $ 11,700 | | Little Theatre of Owatonna will produce the comedy Noises Off, with six public performances April 25-27, and May 2-4, 2025. |
Lyric Opera of the North, Duluth | $ 30,000 | | Lyric Opera of the North will conclude its 20th anniversary season with a June 2025 production of Die Fledermaus at the NorShor Theatre, engaging over seventy artists and reaching an audience of more than a thousand. |
Lenora E. Magee, Saint Paul | $ 24,500 | | Magee will present Orisun Soul Sessions, a monthly open mic "with a twist," including live music, local artist features, and theraputic conversation with community. |
Mainspring, Caledonia | $ 21,450 | | Mainspring will engage rural Minnesotans in a community led public art project to add depth to small town placemaking and economic vitality while supporting Minnesota artists. |
Mankato and North Mankato ACT on Alzheimer's, Mankato | $ 35,000 | | Mankato and North Mankato ACT on Alzheimer's will provide meaningful, community based arts engagement activities designed for people living with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias, and their care partners. |
Mankato Symphony Orchestra, Mankato | $ 35,000 | | Mankato Symphony Orchestra will perform two diverse concerts, with the goal of attracting new audiences. |
Mathew Janczewski's ARENA DANCES, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Mathew Janczewski's Arena Dances will present Candy Box Dance Festival, an eclectic gathering of performances, workshops, and public showings featuring a range of experience levels, aesthetics, and artistic voices of Minnesota dance and choreographic work. |
Matinee Musicale, Inc, Duluth | $ 20,000 | | Matinee Musicale will present concerts with mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke at Mitchell Auditorium in Duluth and at Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College. A master class will also be held at University of Minnesota Duluth. |
Memorialize the Movement, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Memorialize the Movement will host the 5th annual Justice for George event featuring plywood murals from the 2020 uprising, musical and visual performances, live and interactive muralists, the debut of a documentary film, and a vendor fair. |
Mesabi Symphony Orchestra, Virginia | $ 27,560 | | Mesabi Symphony Orchestra will enrich the cultural life of Iron Range communities by bringing live concerts to the cities of Virginia, Hibbing, and Ely and giving area musicians opportunities to share their love of music. |
MICC, Richfield | $ 30,258 | | Minnesota Independence College and Community collaborates with local artists or art providers to offer art excursions and experiences to autistic and neurodiverse adults as part of its Social Engagement Program, offering an average of sixty-six social and peer led activities each month. |
Marcela Michelle, Minneapolis | $ 25,000 | | Michelle will produce and present a new choreographic work featuring a queer ensemble. |
Mid West Music Fest, Winona | $ 35,000 | | Mid West Music Fest will host its flagship music festival in Winona, to provide residents and visitors with live music experiences in community spaces at a two-day event that highlights new Minnesota talent and regional artists. |
Rascal Miles, Saint Paul | $ 25,000 | | Miles will facilitate a series of video screenings with spatial audio hosted at five venues across the state of Minnesota. |
Minnesota Krump, Apple Valley | $ 25,000 | | Minnesota Krump will produce a weekend-long Krump Festival called The Uprizing in June 2025 in Saint Paul, including krump workshops, performances, and competitions for audiences in and around the Twin Cities metro. |
Minnesota Marine Art Museum, Winona | $ 35,000 | | The Minnesota Marine Art Museum, in partnership with Liquid Music and the Winona Symphony Orchestra, will present a site specific collaboration exploring the interplay of music and visual art, inspired by the upper Mississippi River. |
Minnesota Orchestra, Minneapolis | $ 25,000 | | Minnesota Orchestra will collaborate with community partners to create a series of concerts that provide individuals with sensory sensitivities, and their families, with tailored and inclusive musical arts experiences. |
Minnesota Philharmonic Orchestra, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Minnesota Philharmonic Orchestra, the nation's first LGBTQIA+ orchestra, will showcase the talents of underrepresented artists, namely LGBTQIA+, women, and people of color, with three in-person and virtual concerts and one children's program. |
Minnesota Salsa Fiesta, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Minnesota Salsa Fiesta will present a showcase of salsa music, Latin dance, and Latino art at Mill City Museum in July 2025. Over seventy-five performing artists will engage hundreds of attendees with live salsa music in the venue's iconic ruins courtyard. |
Mixed Blood Theatre Company, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Mixed Blood will produce a community based play called The Pasture that looks at housing issues and policies surrounding senior housing from an LGBTQ+ perspective. |
Mixed Precipitation, Minneapolis | $ 25,000 | | Mixed Precipitation will tour The Pickup Truck Opera, a lively outdoor opera based on Der Freischütz (The Marksman), a Faustian myth of hunters, silver bullets, and exploring queer experiences in the wild, adapted with performers in southwest Minnesota. |
More Than a Single Story, Saint Paul | $ 35,000 | | More Than a Single Story will present readings, public conversations, and writing workshops; engaging BIPOC writers with communities as a way to balance public discourse and provide a forum for cross-cultural empathy and understanding. |
Tamina Muhammad, Woodbury | $ 24,955 | | Muhammad will present Art for the Ages, two months of visual art classes for seniors and teens, culminating in a public artist showcase. |
Mankwe M. Ndosi, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Ndosi will offer Regeneration Journeys: Graveyard to Garden, nine mobile gatherings fostering creative community engagement with neighbors at Say Their Names cemetery. |
Noatun Community Wooden Boat Works, Duluth | $ 35,000 | | Noatun Community Wooden Boat Works will offer diverse community participants an opportunity to develop new creative skills through collaborative wooden boat building, metal work, and fiber arts on Minnesota's North Shore. |
North House Folk School, Grand Marais | $ 10,000 | | North House Folk School will enhance arts access for rural Minnesotans and participants of all ages by connecting kids and families with hands-on arts learning during the 2025 Family Weekend event, inspiring participants to explore and grow creatively. |
North Shore Music Association, Grand Marais | $ 26,800 | | North Shore Music Association will present concerts and educational programs in an array of musical genres that offer cultural and artistic enrichment for people of all ages. |
Northeast Contemporary Services, Inc, Roseville | $ 27,120 | | Northeast Contemporary Services, Inc. and Upstream Arts will partner to provide adults and seniors who have intellectual and developmental disabilities with multidisciplinary arts programs designed to develop vital social/emotional and communication skills. |
Northern Film Alliance, Duluth | $ 35,000 | | Northern Film Alliance will present The North Star Story Summit in Duluth during the fall of 2025, showcasing films, web series, and episodic content. The event will feature pitches, scripts, videos, and industry panels to support both creators and the local community. |
Northern Lakes Arts Association, Ely | $ 35,000 | | Northern Lakes Arts Association will create a season of theater, concerts, and camps during the summer to engage, excite, and empower all ages to participate in the arts. Through free concerts, low-cost events, and pay what you can performances, it'll be accessible to all. |
Northern Lights Music Festival, Inc, Gilbert | $ 31,700 | | Northern Lights Music Festival will expand its programming beyond the festival season to offer year-round opportunities, providing increased instruction for the opera chorus, private lesson students, and the Suzuki string program. |
Northfield Arts Guild, Northfield | $ 35,000 | | Northfield Arts Guild will expand its free art offerings, including new exhibitions and classes, workshops, and events in photography, storytelling, audio plays, and more, for previously underserved makers, members of the disability community, and anyone looking for opportunities to create more social connections. |
Off-Leash Area, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Off-Leash Area will increase connection, participation, and visibility with the disability community, an important and growing constituency of the organization, through its 2025/26 core community performing arts programs: Off-Kilter and the Neighborhood Garage Tour. |
Open Arts Minnesota, Mankato | $ 25,000 | | Open Arts Minnesota will deliver in person and virtual theatrical and literary programming for people with disabilities in communities throughout southwest Minnesota. |
Open Eye Theatre, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Open Eye Theatre will invest in diverse artists, expand its geographic reach, and build new audiences with a series of innovative arts experiences for all ages, including a theatrical musical and a Puppet Lab and Driveway Tour. |
Our Streets, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Our Streets will present Imagine events, a platform for local artists to take the stage. Live performers from marginalized communities will celebrate the vibrancy of neighborhoods affected by highway construction. |
Sofia Padilla, Minneapolis | $ 25,000 | | Padilla will create and lead immersive sensory sound art workshops with immigrant communities. These trilingual workshops will integrate culturally specific healing arts with a South Asian voice yoga collaborator for cummunal humming and live sand drawing. |
Lara Palmqvist, Faribault | $ 24,978 | | Palmqvist will engage Minnesotans in sustained literary arts experiences in seven small town locations across the state by facilitating a letter writing project, a related generative writing workshop, and an online community hub for writers. |
People Serving People, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | People Serving People will partner with the MacPhail Center for Music and St. Anne's Place emergency shelter, offering music classes to children enrolled in on-site and off-site early childhood education programs. |
Atlas O. Phoenix, Minneapolis |
$ 25,000 | | Phoenix will present the TranSpace Pride Festival, celebrating trans, intersex, gender expansive, and disabled artists in cabaret, concert, and vendor showcases. The event fosters a space of love and praise, to celebrate magnificent and luminous individuality. |
Pillsbury House Theatre, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Pillsbury House Theatre will engage five resident teaching artists to offer intergenerational, participatory arts experiences that support community members in its surrounding neighborhoods in exercising their creativity and connecting with each other. |
Planet Firebomb, Saint Paul | $ 19,000 | | Planet Firebomb will present Aurica's Four Eras (tentative title), celebrating different musical eras with themed decor and live performances at each event. |
Mary Prescott, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Prescott will develop and produce a new original interdisciplinary performance, Ancestral Table, and present it as part of The Great Northern Festival. |
PRIME Productions, Saint Louis Park | $ 35,000 | | PRIME Productions will broaden their cultural storytelling by producing Abuelita, a play by Nathan Youngerberg. |
Project for Pride in Living, Inc, Minneapolis | $ 24,300 | | Project for Pride in Living, Inc. will partner with artists and organizations in the Twin Cities to offer a series of exposure experiences for young people, ages 16-25, who are engaged in the Learn and Earn to Achieve Potential reengagement program. Participants will explore new art forms including glass blowing, woodshop, and aerial arts in pursuit of self efficacy. |
ProMusica Minnesota, Mankato | $ 10,000 | | ProMusica Minnesota will present eight professional chamber music concerts throughout southern Minnesota and provide musical and visual exhibition opportunities to young artists. |
Thomas Putzier, Taylors Falls | $ 25,000 | | Putzier will produce two gallery exhibitions, and facilitate two artist talks, hosted in both greater Minnesota and the Twin Cities metro area. |
Ragamala Dance, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Ragamala Dance Company will present a statewide tour of original South Indian Bharatanatyam performances created by Aparna, Ranee, and Ashwini Ramaswamy, accompanied by a series of public engagement activities. |
REACH for Resources, Minnetonka | $ 21,377 | | Reach for Resources will provide free therapeutic arts classes specifically designed for teens and adults of all abilities. Classes will culminate in an art showcase in which participating artists can show their work to the community. |
Red Eye Theater, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Red Eye Theater will deepen support of underserved Minnesota performance based artists across three core programs (New Works 4 Weeks, OMNIVERS, Tiger Balm), expanding their artistic capacities and audience connections while cultivating greater sustainability. |
Reif Center, Grand Rapids | $ 34,547 | | Reif Center will engage new audiences by presenting an immersive rock concert experience featuring the high-energy tribute band Hairball at a Grand Rapids hockey arena. |
Resounding Voices, Rochester | $ 32,965 | | Resounding Voices, a chorus for people with Alzheimer's disease and dementia and their care partners, will hold weekly rehearsals in the fall and spring with public concerts at the end of each semester. |
Ashley Richardson, Saint Paul | $ 25,000 | | Richardson will present I Too, am America, an exhibit that pairs poetry and mixed media collages, created by Minneapolis based artist A. Drew Hammond, to spark discussions surrounding the experiences of Black children in America. |
Rise, Spring Lake Park | $ 29,800 | | Rise will expand its Art Speaks programming for people with disabilities, serving 300 artists. |
Rochester Art Center, Rochester | $ 35,000 | | Rochester Art Center will partner with Olmsted County History Center to curate thirty historical objects that will inspire thirty artists to create new artwork for an exhibition and public programming. |
Rochester Repertory, Rochester | $ 17,350 | | Rochester Repertory will produce the musical theater comedy Falsettos in its next season to explore issues of LGBTQ+ awareness, coming of age, and finding love amid the AIDS pandemic through ten performances, engaging 750 audience members. |
Rochester Symphony, Rochester | $ 35,000 | | Rochester Symphony Orchestra and Chorale will present a multimedia performance of The Planets by Holst. More than 120 musician artists will perform for an audience of 1,000 residents of greater Minnesota, bringing a standard work of orchestral repertoire to vibrant life. |
Rocky Wall Entertainment, Silver Bay | $ 35,000 | | Rocky Wall Productions will produce the 2025 Silver Bay Music in the Park concert series featuring regional and national artists performing a series of eight, late summer outdoor concerts. |
Rosy Simas Danse, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Rosy Simas Danse's dance and community engagement project A:gajë:gwah ësa'nigöëwë:nye:' (I hope it will stir your mind) shares Native views of what it means to cultivate a mind of peace with a broad Minnesota audience. |
Patrick M. Ryan, Mankato | $ 12,600 | | Ryan, an author and playwright, will share his personal narrative on Parkinson's disease through four regional performances of Pat Ryan and the Humor of Parkinson's: Part 3, The Fall. |
Sacred Heart Music Center, Duluth | $ 20,700 | | Sacred Heart Music Center will present in person and live streamed musical concerts by jazz, Minnesota hip-hop, and Iron Range based rock artists. |
Saint Cloud Symphony Orchestra, Saint Cloud | $ 35,000 | | Saint Cloud Symphony Orchestra will perform seven concerts of diverse orchestral repertoire for Saint Cloud area audiences. Outreach activities will include chamber music programs for youth in schools and for seniors in community centers and senior residences. |
The Saint John's Boys' Choir, Collegeville | $ 35,000 | | The Saint John's Boys' Choir will enrich the lives of central Minnesota residents through its Sing in the Summer Camp, KidSing Festival, and A Ceremony of Carols concerts featuring over 60 young choristers and numerous talented local guest musicians. |
Saint Paul Almanac, Saint Paul | $ 35,000 | | Saint Paul Almanac will feature the work of underrepresented literary artists, primarily BIPOC, both in print and online. The Almanac will also facilitate cross-cultural engagement by providing opportunities for artists to connect with diverse audiences through readings, listening sessions, and insightful conversations. |
Les Sanders, Bemidji | $ 20,950 | | Sanders will offer art classes in cottonwood bark carving, rosemaling, Ojibwe beadwork, mosaics, and more for rural community members in greater Minnesota. |
Kayla Schiltgen, Two Harbors | $ 25,000 | | Schiltgen will tour her experimental dance solo, "is this magic?" to four rural communities across Minnesota. Each performance is accompanied by an artist chat and creative movement workshop, further exploring themes in the work. |
Selby Avenue JazzFest, Saint Paul | $ 24,700 | | Selby Ave JazzFest will occur on Saturday, September 13 in Saint Paul, featuring a day of live jazz, kids' activities, and artist demonstrations, surrounded by an inclusive community vibe. |
Shakespearean Youth Theatre, Saint Paul | $ 35,000 | | Shakespearean Youth Theatre will present the Summer Shakespeare Festival at the Crane Theatre in Minneapolis in July 2025. |
The Sheldon Theatre, Red Wing | $ 35,000 | | The Sheldon Theatre will present a matinee series to educate, entertain, and enlighten older adults in greater Minnesota. |
Sod House Theater, Saint Anthony Village | $ 35,000 | | Sod House Theater will tour greater Minnesota with Five More Minutes, a story of an interracial couple facing Alzheimer's disease. The play aims to raise awareness about the importance of early medical intervention in managing the disease. |
Sounds of Hope, Ltd., Saint Paul | $ 35,000 | | Sounds of Hope's company of youth and adult performers, Songs of Hope, will bring its global music performances to twelve diverse communities across Minnesota. |
Springboard for the Arts, Saint Paul | $ 35,000 | | Springboard for the Arts will present Springboard on Ice, engaging Minnesota community members in artist led performances and creative programming across its two locations in Saint Paul and Fergus Falls in winter 2026. |
Tangible Collective, Minneapolis | $ 25,000 | | Tangible Collective will present its annual Swap Meet and its Teaching Artist Cohort, featuring a fiber arts workshop and a printmaking workshop series, both led by Black, Minneapolis based artists. |
Beau Tate, Minneapolis | $ 24,200 | | Tate will facilitate a series of collaborative open studio critiques for selected queer Minnesotan artists that culminates in an interactive public exhibition where Minnesotans can engage with the resulting artwork. |
Teatro del Pueblo, Saint Paul | $ 34,000 | | Teatro del Pueblo will present Kiss of the Spider Woman, a musical set in a 1960s Argentinian prison during a time of intense political extremism and cultural unrest. |
Theater Latté Da, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Theater Latté Da will present the Twin Cities' first professional production of the five-time Tony Award winning musical Fun Home, based on the autobiographical graphic memoir by former Minnesota resident Alison Bechdel. |
Theatre B, Moorhead | $ 18,800 | | Theatre B will present a radically inclusive adaptation of the Jane Austen classic Pride and Prejudice. |
Theatre Pro Rata, Bloomington | $ 25,000 | | Theatre Pro Rata presents ten simultaneous performances of Three Sisters, a new adaptation of a modern classic, and No Sisters, a contemporary piece inspired by and critiquing it. |
TigerLion Arts, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | TigerLion Arts will present Big World, an all-ages theatrical spectacular that brings joy, hope, and harmony to the inner child of Minnesota's diverse audiences. |
Tofte Lake Center, Ely | $ 24,635 | | Tofte Lake Center will host 6 Minnesota BIPOC artists, and 4 Minnesota parent artists with family members, for a one-week artist residency and Art Crawl, providing a supportive, creative retreat to focus on the development and sharing of work. |
Yuki Tokuda, Burnsville | $ 25,000 | | Tokuda will produce a dance performance, collaborating with violinists, to express healing in this community and share the love of ballet. |
Trademark Theater, Saint Paul | $ 35,000 | | Trademark Theater's New Works program will support one new concept incubation, two in-process workshops for The Fox Sisters and Other Guilty Parties and The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the world premiere production of The Measures. |
Trilingua Cinema, Saint Paul | $ 25,000 | | Trilingua Cinema will present its free summer film series at the East Side Sculpture Park for the third consecutive year and pilot an employment training and filmmaking program for youth aged 16-24. |
Twin Cities Chinese Dance Center, Roseville | $ 35,000 | | The Twin Cities Chinese Dance Center, along with four partner organizations, will present a two-day performance of Songs of the Miao Ridge featuring Chinese folk dances, Hmong dances, Irish dances, ballet, and Chinese folk songs. |
Twin Cities Film Fest, Saint Louis Park | $ 35,000 | | Twin Cities Film Fest will further deepen programming and access for underserved artists and communities during its annual ten-day festival. |
Twin Cities Gay Men's Chorus, Minneapolis | $ 25,000 | | Twin Cities Gay Men's Chorus will develop a reimagination of its concert model to engage suburban and rural Minnesota communities through LGBTQIA+-affirming, high caliber choral music experiences. |
Twin Cities Pride, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Twin Cities Pride's 53rd Festival will showcase the talents of the greater queer community, featuring over one hundred local artist exhibitors, sixty performers and groups, and several artists in residence. |
Valley Friendship Club, Stillwater | $ 35,000 | | Valley Friendship Club will offer weekly art classes and six summer camps in art, music, and theater for people with disabilities. Artistic creations from these classes will be shared with the community at the Valley Friendship Club's Art Showcase Event. |
Molly Van Avery, Minneapolis | $ 24,900 | | Van Avery will partner with Sugarloaf Cove Nature Center in Schroeder to create a self-guided audio project titled This Point in Time. |
Velvet Tones, Apple Valley | $ 13,833 | | The Velvet Tones senior choir will share the joy of music with the community by performing twelve concerts at churches, retirement homes, care facilities, and veteran centers reaching audiences with limited access to live performances. |
Vivie, Minnetonka | $ 32,493 | | Vivie will host artist residencies in visual art, photography, music, and movement at six Vivie older adult living communities, making high quality art experiences accessible to residents living independently and in assisted or memory care communities. |
Walking Shadow Theatre Company, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Walking Shadow Theatre Company will present Mae West and the Trial of Sex, an original theatrical production, at the Crane Theater in Minneapolis from May 31 - June 22, 2025. |
We All Need Food and Water, Shoreview | $ 25,000 | | We All Need Food and Water will perform Green Light Puppets shows for youth in underserved areas of the Twin Cities' metro. Its fun shows promote puppetry as an art form and a teaching tool that empowers youth to take action on environmental issues. |
West Bank Business Association, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | The West Bank Business Association will sponsor its third annual block party with three stages of diverse musical and theatrical performances, as well as a hyperlocal neighborhood artisan market. |
Winona State University, Winona | $ 18,010 | | Winona State University choirs will collaborate with Cantus to program, produce, and perform a concert serving audience members in greater Minnesota. |
Wonderlust Productions, Saint Paul | $ 35,000 | | Wonderlust Productions will engage Minnesotans in The Values Play Project. Participants will collaborate across value differences to build a community driven play loosely based on Euripides' The Bacchae that will examine our country's culture wars. |
Worthington International Festival, Worthington | $ 25,000 | | Worthington International Festival will work with community leaders to present a multicultural festival that includes Minnesota folk and traditional artists and performers including dancers, musicians, and singers in summer 2025. |
Yan Pang Create, Saint Paul | $ 20,000 | | Yan Pang Create will present Shelter, an opera that delves into the profound impact of addiction across generations, examining how it alters self-perception and relationships, while fostering resilience and self-determination. |
Eun Bee Yes, Columbia Heights | $ 24,362 | | Yes will present monthly Transcendence Cabaret shows to reach a broader audience throughout Minnesota, featuring primarily BIPOC transgender, nonbinary, and two spirit artists throughout the year. |
Shun Jie Yong, Minneapolis | $ 20,500 | | Yong will offer photography lessons to participants, using a traditional 8 x 10 large format camera, and instruct them in photo development techniques. The sessions will be hosted at five different nonprofit cultural organizations within the Twin Cities. |
Youth Dance Ensemble and School, Burnsville | $ 20,910 | | Youth Dance Ensemble will produce the Modern Dance Project for forty underserved and at risk 6th-8th graders in the south metro. Students will explore modern dance technique and the choreographic process, and will perform at two community concerts. |
Z Puppets Rosenschnoz, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Z Puppets Rosenschnoz will tour its musical adventures of Dagsi Turtle and Jisdu Wabbit to youth and families in northern Minnesota. Led by Chris Griffith, a Cherokee Nation citizen, it will engage Minnesotans in Indigenous language, culture, and history. |
zAmya Theater Project, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | zAmya Theater Project will produce Living in America: The Waiting List is Full, an original play about public housing featuring stories of those who've lived there. It will tour to five venues: a theater, school, faith institution, company, and shelter. |
