This pilot program supports activities that share, explore, pass on, express, or celebrate culture through the arts. Culture may be defined by a common ethnicity, tribal affiliation, geographic or regional identity, or language. Traditional and contemporary forms of cultural expression may be funded in this program. Funds could be used to support practicing a cultural art form; presenting cultural festivals, community celebrations, performances, media, or exhibitions; offering demonstrations, etc. Funds could also be used to deepen or pass on cultural traditions through apprenticeships or documentation.
| Grantee, City |
Grant Amount |
Alliance Française of Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minneapolis | $ 10,710 | | Alliance Française of Minneapolis/St. Paul will host a month-long celebration of the Francophone country of Tunisia, sharing Tunisian culture through an art exhibition, film, cuisine, music, live performance, literature and more. |
Alliance of Minnesota Chinese Organizations, Saint Paul | $ 35,000 | | Alliance of Minnesota Chinese Organizations will offer art, entertainment, and cultural engagement through celebrations of the Asian community. |
Ambassadors of Culture, Saint Cloud | $ 35,000 | | Ambassadors of Culture will present cultural storytelling events, workshops on Somali drumming and dance, and collaborative performances that bring together different East African and global traditions. |
Ryan Berg, Minneapolis | $ 25,000 | | Berg will present the Writing as Healing Project, offering trauma informed writing courses centering LGBTQI+ and QTBIPOC voices, using story as a tool for healing, empowerment, and cultural connection. |
BERI., Ramsey | $ 21,250 | | BERI. will record a five-song EP highlighting music and culture of the Ikwerre tribe of Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria, and present a live performance incorporating traditional Nigerian folklore and visuals of the Ikwerre village and Rivers State landscapes. |
Body Prayers, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Body Prayers will present The Ceremony, an immersive event celebrating Black culture through art, dance, music, and ritual. The Ceremony fosters community healing, storytelling, and resilience, honoring ancestral traditions while creating space for new expressions and collective joy. |
BORIKÉN Cultural Center, Mounds View | $ 35,000 | | BORIKÉN Cultural Center will host its annual Parranda Boricua celebration, honoring various Puerto Rican folkloric traditions. Participants will engage in community healing and belonging through musical performances, dance, and holiday related customs. |
CAAM Chinese Dance Theater, Saint Paul | $ 35,000 | | CAAM Chinese Dance Theater will engage dancers, audiences, and other participants in the creation of deeply meaningful, highly innovative programs that reflect profound nuances of Chinese culture. |
Caracol Latino Performing Arts, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Caracol Latino Performing Arts will present the thirteenth annual Festival de Las Calaveras: Twin Cities Día de los Muertos Celebration, featuring Latinx cultural arts through live music, dance, spoken word, visual art, lucha libre, and family art activities. |
Constanza Carballo, Cottage Grove | $ 24,900 | | Carballo will lead outdoor printmaking workshops in Minneapolis parks for Latinx and unhoused communities. Participants will create traditional Latin American linocut prints exploring dignity and identity, and their work will be exhibited publicly. |
Centro Tyrone Guzman, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Centro Tyrone Guzman will work with professional Latine artists to engage low-income Latines of all ages in creating a Día de Muertos community altar, host a public celebration event, and document and share the stories of three Latine altar artists. |
Chinese American Culture and Friendship, Bloomington | $ 34,970 | | Chinese American Culture and Friendship will produce two Chinese performing arts shows, featuring traditional Chinese instrumental music, vocal music, and dance. |
CLUES, Saint Paul | $ 35,000 | | CLUES will empower Minnesota/Latine identity, belonging, and expression by producing a year-round series of multimedia exhibits in its gallery, focusing on race, gender, and youth voices to elevate diverse perspectives and hope. |
Confluence: An East Lake Studio for Community Design, Minneapolis | $ 25,000 | | Confluence: An East Lake Studio for Community Design will create nine gatherings, workshops, and publications to open space for dialogue and relationship building around the Minneapolis 9th Ward's unique history of cultural production as a form of social and civic engagement. |
Cow Tipping, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Cow Tipping will help seventy Minnesotans with intellectual and developmental disabilities—half BIPOC and half from greater Minnesota—build intersectional disability culture and publish seven radically self-representative chapbooks, celebrated in community events. |
Dakota Wicohan, Morton | $ 35,000 | | Dakota Wicohan will conduct five hands-on adult cultural arts workshops focused on traditional Dakota artistic techniques and art forms: buffalo hide preparation, featherwork and regalia design, birchbark art and basketry, Indigenous pottery, and pipestone carving. |
Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College, Cloquet | $ 35,000 | | Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College will present a year-long Preservation of Traditional Arts workshop series, celebrating and helping preserve endangered Ojibwe traditional art forms. |
Hmong Cultural Center, Saint Paul | $ 35,000 | | Hmong Cultural Center will offer qeej instrument classes, Hmong wedding and funeral song instruction, and school field trips to the Hmong Cultural Center Museum to learn about Hmong culture, history, and important Hmong folk art forms. |
Hmong Museum, Saint Paul | $ 35,000 | | Hmong Museum and Ka Oskar Ly will launch a Hmong batik apprenticeship program, empowering apprentices to become skilled teaching artists and preserving this vital folk art for future generations. |
James Johnson, Saint Paul | $ 15,800 | | Johnson will present his original show, Thistle and Rose: A Celtic-Balkan Fusion, at four sites that serve and employ seniors, veterans, people with disabilities, and people of color. |
Penny Kagigebi, Detroit Lakes | $ 25,000 | | Kagigebi will empower Native Two-Spirit cultural reclamation through a new exhibition, Two-Spirit Stories, through which she will gather Native Two-Spirit community members for art and conversation while expanding and sharing quillwork skills. |
Rick Kagigebi, Detroit Lakes | $ 25,000 | | Kagigebi will create appliquéd mural blankets for exhibition and a how-to video for the appliquéd mural blanket making process. Recorded interviews with Kagigebi will be made to introduce his how-to videos and to promote public engagement. |
Kalpulli KetzalCoatlicue, Minneapolis | $ 25,000 | | Kalpulli KetzalCoatlicue will present the Flowering of Light Festival, a reference to the artistic transformations that come from the cultural seeds that have been tended over the spring and into the summer solstice. |
Karen Organization of Minnesota, Roseville | $ 35,000 | | Karen Organization of Minnesota will continue the Karen weaving circle to carry on an endangered traditional art form integral to the culture of refugees from Burma living in Minnesota through weekly workshops, classes for adults and youth, and public educational events. |
Naomi Ko, Savage | $ 25,000 | | Ko will present a workshop and reading series to promote Asian literature, culture, and heritage. Participants will develop and learn to write stories of love and joy inspired by traditional Asian folklore. |
Korean Cultural Association, Minneapolis | $ 32,000 | | Korean Cultural Association will offer traditional Korean performing and visual arts instruction for Korean Americans. Students will demonstrate what they've learned through public performances and a final recital. |
MacRostie Art Center, Grand Rapids | $ 35,000 | | MacRostie Art Center will grow the Giinawind Creative Space as a center of Native art and culture in Grand Rapids. Giinawind will host events, exhibits, and classes by Indigenous artists and culture bearers and expand outreach to tribal communities. |
Mewinzha Ondaadiziike Wiigaming, Bemidji | $ 35,000 | | Mewinzha Ondaadiziike Wiigaming will coordinate traditional and contemporary arts workshops in Bemidji. Through creative expression, participants will share, explore, and celebrate Anishinaabe culture across generations and identities. |
Minnesota Discovery Center, Chisholm | $ 33,950 | | Minnesota Discovery Center will present a temporary exhibit featuring commissioned artwork by twenty Indigenous artists, facilitated by mentor/mentee artists Moira Villiard and Alexis Martinez. |
Marlena Myles, Saint Paul | $ 25,000 | | Myles will lead Dakota Wind Celebrations and free workshops rooted in land and culture to uplift Native voices, reconnect communities to the natural world, and welcome home exiled Dakota through seasonal events and a poetry book project. |
Sharon Nordrum, Laporte | $ 25,000 | | Nordrum will host a two-day cultural event immersed in art and music of the Indigenous peoples of our region, including an artisan market, demonstrations, and performances. |
Niphone Phommaras, Saint Paul Park | $ 25,000 | | Phommaras will mentor and train students to showcase their talents at vibrant community celebrations, including Lao New Year, the 50th Anniversary Veteran Commemorations, Vietnamese New Year, and the Taste of Asia festival. |
Nirmala Rajasekar, Plymouth | $ 21,625 | | Rajasekar will explore the ancient Tamil anthology of second-century poems, Kurunthogai, that link land and nature to human emotions. She will compose music for these rare poems and share them with audiences in Minnesota via workshops and concerts. |
Reviving the Islamic Sisterhood for Empowerment, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | Reviving the Islamic Sisterhood for Empowerment will engage Minnesota audiences through a multimedia storytelling series uplifting Muslim women's voices in Minnesota through narrative, performance, and community centered cultural expression. |
Roseau County Historical Society, Roseau | $ 32,116 | | Roseau County Historical Society will host a year-long cultural series celebrating and sharing the cultural heritage of the region through music, dance, food, and art. |
Michael Rutledge, Bemidji | $ 11,150 | | Rutledge will learn from Ojibwe elders and invite others to learn alongside him, teaching and connecting people with the land so they gain an appreciation of Anishinaabe homelands, art, and culture. |
Sanford Health of Northern Minnesota, Bemidji | $ 35,000 | | Sanford Health of Northern Minnesota will host the 21st Annual Niimi'idiwin, providing an opportunity for community members to gather for a celebration of holistic healing and Ojibwe heritage. |
Somali Youth and Family Development Center, Minneapolis | $ 33,542 | | Somali Youth and Family Development Center will provide traditional Somali dance, henna, and fashion workshops in the Twin Cities. These activities will preserve Somali cultural traditions and share them with the broader Minnesota community via an exhibition. |
Teatro del Pueblo, Saint Paul | $ 35,000 | | Teatro del Pueblo will present a world premiere Spanish language play, Los Profanadores de La Calle Arenas, celebrating Latin-Caribbean culture through music, dance, food, and storytelling. |
Twin Cities West Metro Asian Fair, Plymouth | $ 35,000 | | Twin Cities West Metro Asian Fair will celebrate diverse Asian traditions, art, music, and cuisine, fostering cross-cultural appreciation through interactive activities, exhibits, and performances. |
Saymoukda Vongsay, Saint Paul | $ 25,000 | | Vongsay will write a collection of short stories about bereavement and reimagined recipes from the Laotian diaspora, and share them in a public reading with the recipes prepared by Laotian chefs. |
Waawaate Programs, Ely | $ 34,999 | | Waawaate Programs will host media workshops with students and educators from the Bois Forte Reservation. Participants will use modern storytelling techniques to increase community connection to the land and traditional ways. |
Waḳaƞ Ṭípi Awanyankapi, Saint Paul | $ 35,000 | | Waḳaƞ Ṭípi Awanyankapi will commission artists and develop public programming as part of the Dakota Lifeways program, an integrated traditional cultural and ecological art initiative. |
WE WIN Institute, Minneapolis | $ 35,000 | | WE WIN Institute will celebrate African American culture by engaging over 250 youth, artists, and activists, and sharing the history and principles of Kwanzaa through storytelling, dance, spoken word, hip-hop, drumming, and other cultural art forms. |
Pagnia Xiong, Woodbury | $ 25,000 | | Xiong will produce a bilingual music concert exploring Hmong cultural identity, mental health, and intergenerational healing through original songs and storytelling. |
Dan Yang, Saint Paul | $ 34,999 | | Yang and his team will produce season two of the successful bilingual animated video program Once Upon a Time. This twelve-episode series will introduce Minnesota audiences to the rich tapestry of classic Hmong folklore and mythology. |
