40 ideas win $1.29 million in 2015 St. Paul Knight Arts Challenge

ST. PAUL, MINN. –  Oct. 6, 2015 – From the streets of Lowertown to Rondo and the West Side, 40 ideas will bring art to neighborhoods across St. Paul, with $1.29 million in funding from the  Knight Arts Challenge.

A program of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the challenge funds the best ideas for engaging and enriching St. Paul through the arts.

The 2015 winners include large and small arts organizations, collectives and individual artists.

Their diverse ideas range from a Winter Carnival concert played on instruments made of ice to flash mobs of flamenco dancers and the transformation of a water tower with stained glass murals.

All of the winners answered the question, “What’s your best idea for the arts in St. Paul?”

“This year’s winners reflect community-driven ideas that will bring the arts more deeply into neighborhoods across St. Paul,” said Victoria Rogers, vice president for arts at Knight Foundation. “Their work reflects the breadth, promise and talent of this community.”

With challenge funding, the 2015 winners will:

Energize new places and neighborhoods – by expanding the Northern Spark festival to communities along the Green Line, creating an arts hub in St. Paul’s Latino West Side, expanding the geographic footprint of the Twin Cities Film Fest to new St. Paul venues, and bringing together Rondo artists, business and neighborhood organizations to create an authentic narrative for the neighborhood;

Engage St. Paul through movable feasts of art – by bringing festivity to the streets through a traveling flash mob of flamenco singers and dancers for holiday processions, connecting with audiences through a mobile comedy stage where people can create and share jokes, and gathering a roving audience to performances at multiple locations;

Add surprise and delight to everyday life – by transforming two water towers in the Creative Enterprise Zone into beacons wrapped in stained-glass murals, finding the musicality in baseball through a percussion performance influenced by real-life baseball signals and plays from the St. Paul Saints, and engaging the public in music-making by placing handmade, crank-operated music boxes in public spaces;

Use art to raise awareness of important public issues – by spurring dialogues on racism through powerful and provocative art-making and exhibits, constructing a public art project showcasing the plight of bees, and launching a new performance piece that centers on the effects of long-term illnesses.

The full list of winners and their project ideas is below. More information is available at knightarts.org.

The Knight Arts Challenge has only three rules for applying: 1) The idea must be about the arts; 2) The project must take place in or benefit St. Paul; 3) The grant recipients must find funds to match Knight’s commitment.

The challenge is part of an $8 million arts investment in St. Paul that Knight Foundation announced in January 2014, which includes funding for the Arts Challenge and for anchor arts institutions. Knight has provided more than $64 million in support to the St. Paul community since 1977.  Locally, Knight also offers the Knight Cities Challenge, which is now open and seeking ideas that make the 26 communities where Knight invests more successful, and the Knight Green Line Challenge, which seeks ideas to tap into the potential of the Green Line to make surrounding neighborhoods in St. Paul more vibrant places to live and work.

For more on Knight Foundation’s arts initiative and to view a full list of Knight Arts Challenge winners, visit knightarts.org. Connect on Facebook and via @knightarts and #knightarts on Twitter.

About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Knight Foundation supports transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance media innovation, engage communities and foster the arts. We believe that democracy thrives when people and communities are informed and engaged. For more, visit knightfoundation.org.

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Contact:

Kathy Graves, Parenteau Graves, 612-242-3184, kathy@parenteaugraves.com

Marika Lynch, Knight Foundation Communications Consultant, media@knightfoundation.org, 305-908-2677

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Knight Arts Challenge St. Paul Winners 2015

People of Color at Center of Shakespeare Remake

Alberto Justiniano
$45,000
Building trust between St. Paul’s immigrant communities by remaking Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” from the perspective of the Latino Garcias versus the Hmong Vangs

Local Artists Bring Works to Transit

Arcata Press/St. Paul Almanac
$45,000
Bringing dynamic art into neighborhoods by combining the work of local poets and visual artists on posters in trains and buses

Little Mekong Night Market Expands

Asian Economic Development Association
$50,000
Transforming the five-block Little Mekong district with an expanded, two-weekend night market that elevates the work of artists

Production Draws Parallels Between Reconstruction and Contemporary Injustice

Brownbody
$70,000
Drawing parallels between the Reconstruction era and today’s social justice movements with a new production that combines figure skating, Afro-modern dance, live vocals and Ida B. Wells’ speeches

Hmong Festival Provides Elevated Platform for Artists

Center for Hmong Arts and Talent (CHAT)
$30,000
Strengthening a platform for Hmong artists of all disciplines by expanding the center’s Hmong Arts and Music Festival, which draws thousands to its annual showcase

Spoken Word Events to Pop Up Around St. Paul

Cracked Walnut
$25,000
Creating community in different spaces throughout St. Paul by staging more than 50 spoken literature events with local writers and music ensembles

Coffee Sleeve Conversations Come to St. Paul

Coffee House Press
$5,000
Fostering community conversations on race and the arts in St. Paul through the production and distribution of coffee cup sleeves featuring the words of St. Paul writers of color

Spontaneous Performances Celebrate Frogtown

Dangerous Productions
$10,000
Enlivening Frogtown through a yearlong series of street-level pop-up performances and adventurous educational opportunities

Art to Spur Dialogues on Race

Dayton’s Bluff Community Council
$25,000
Creating powerful, provocative art that reflects the community’s dialogues around racism and catalyzes change in viewpoints and perceptions in the area

Flamenco Processions Energize St. Paul Streets

Deborah Elias Danza Española
$5,000
Bringing festivity to the east and west sides through a traveling flash mob of flamenco singers and dancers creating Christmas and spring processions

New Art Hub Spotlights Work of Latinos

Electric Machete Studios
$50,000
Highlighting the voices of Latinos in St. Paul’s West Side neighborhood by creating an arts hub with studios for music production, visual arts, performance and more

All-Ice Instrument Ensemble Debuts at Winter Carnival

Erik Barsness
$25,000
Stretching ideas of what music can be by creating a set of percussion instruments from ice and using them to play new compositions during the 2017 Winter Carnival

Roving Performance to Take Over Lowertown

Flying Foot Forum
$30,000
Bringing the community together with Dancing Through the Streets, a roving, summer adventure where the audience travels to performances at six Lowertown locations, culminating in a group song and dance party

Production Explores How Theater Changes Lives

Full Circle Theater Company
$5,000
Exploring, through a new production, how theater has changed the lives of diverse St. Paul artists and how, in turn, these artists have shaped the theater community

Public Gets Hand at Music-Making

Greg Herriges
$5,000
Engaging the public in music-making by placing handmade, crank-operated music boxes that play original compositions in public spaces

Dakota Culture at Center of Art Project

Healing Place Collaborative
$35,000
An artist-created sculptural table that incorporates Dakota place names and information about Dakota sites in the area and serves as a focus for discussion and art presentations at public events and parks.

Students and Professionals Participate in Spoken-Word Events

Heather (Desdamona) Ross
$20,000
Celebrating the spoken word by bringing together the voices of students with those of professional artists and poets in a series of readings and workshops

Hmong Storytelling Traditions Shared

Hmong Museum
$20,000
Preserving the art of Hmong storytelling by hosting a series of public events that share a range of love, ghost, orphan and refugee camp stories

Hmong Films Take Over Silver Screen

In Progress
$20,000
Bringing Hmong voices to the silver screen through Qhia Dab Neeg, a two-day Hmong film festival at Metropolitan State University

Program Develops Bharatanatyam Dancers

Kala Vandanam Dance Company
$20,000
Elevating young, high-potential Bharatanatyam dancers through opportunities to participate in an original, professional ensemble production titled “Ritu: The Seasons”

Performance Piece Explores Fear of Water

Kaotic Good Productions
$50,000
Exploring how culture shapes the fear of water with a pool-based performance piece that engages the community to talk about the disproportionate numbers of people of color who cannot swim

Water Tower Gets Stained-Glass Mural Remake

Karl Unnasch
$50,000
Enlivening the Creative Enterprise Zone by transforming a water tower into a beacon wrapped in a backlit, contemporary stained-glass mural

Performance Piece Explores Effects of Serious Illnesses

Katie Ka Vang
$16,000
Opening a dialogue around cancer and other serious illnesses through a piece by playwright Katie Ka Vang, based on her experiences with non-Hodgkins lymphoma

Mobile Stage Brings Comedy to Neighborhoods

Levi Weinhagen
$6,000
Creating space for human connection, artmaking and joy with a mobile, suitcase-like container that turns into a stage where people can create and share jokes

Baseball Signals Become Art in Percussion Performance

Mary Ellen Childs
$25,000
Finding the musicality in baseball through a virtuosic, percussion performance that is influenced by real-life baseball signals and plays from St. Paul Saints coaches and players

A New Digital Cinema Theater for St. Paul

Metropolitan State University Screenwriting Program
$30,000
Serving film artists and building community by creating Film Space, a state-of-the art digital cinema theater on the campus of Metropolitan State University

Residencies Explore Racial Justice Through Art-making

Million Artist Movement

$25,000
Exploring racial justice, trauma, and healing with a series of art-making events that culminate in a community-driven exhibition

Art Engages Seniors in Creative Enterprise Zone

Naomi Cohn
$10,000
Building community and increasing the well-being of older adults by engaging a professional writer to conduct high-quality arts activities with seniors in St. Paul’s Creative Enterprise Zone

Northern Spark Festival Expands to the Green Line

Northern Lights.mn
$100,000
Promoting the Green Line as a creative extension of the community by using the light rail line as the backbone of the 2017 edition of Northern Spark, an all-night, multi-venue arts festival

“Pirates of Penzance” Gets Gender-Bending Staging

One Voice Mixed Chorus
$60,000
Presenting a gender-bending production of the “Pirates of Penzance,” staged outdoors on St. Paul’s Raspberry Island

Bee Real, Bee Everywhere Campaign Highlights Plight of Bees

Public Art Saint Paul
$115,000
Engaging St. Paul residents with the plight of bees through a multidisciplinary, public art project that involves creating bee habitat environments and placing tiny bronze bees in nearby neighborhoods

Lanterns and Mythical Creatures Take Over Frogtown Skyline

Public Domain Productions
$25,000
Creating a community spectacle in the Hamline Midway and Frogtown neighborhoods with a nighttime lantern parade that illuminates the streets with larger-than-life mythical creatures created by local puppet artists and groups

Floating Library Heads to Lake Phalen

Sarah Peters
$10,000
Bringing one-of-a-kind, artist-made books to people paddling on Lake Phalen through a custom  floating library

Legacy of Gordon Parks to Engage Young Black Men in Media and Art-making

SoulTouch Productions
$50,000
Engaging young black males in the arts through a fellows program that teaches photography, music, visual arts, filmmaking and writing in the tradition of the legendary media-maker, artist and humanitarian Gordon Parks

Rondo Artists Enliven Neighborhood

Springboard for the Arts
$30,000
Bringing together and supporting African-American artists who live and work in Rondo with local businesses and organizations to create small art projects that foster an authentic narrative for the neighborhood

World-class Musician Combines Talents with 100 Community Flutists

The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra
$50,000
Combining the talents of a 100-member community-sourced flute chorus and MacArthur Fellow and world-class flutist Claire Chase in a special performance of Salvatore Sciarrino’s “Cutting the Circle of Sounds”

Telegram Deliveries Become Performance Art

The Theater of Public Policy
$15,000
Turning the entire city into a performance space through delivery of improvisational performance telegrams to offices, parks and homes

Memories of St. Paul Curated into Virtual Exhibition

The Drawing Project
$10,000
Engaging a global community through the act of drawing with virtual art collaborations that will be curated in local exhibitions

Twin Cities Film Fest Offers Year-Round Programming

Twin Cities Film Fest
$30,000
Expanding the geographic footprint of the film festival through year-round events and screenings of nationally recognized independent films in new St. Paul venues

Large-Scale Installation Transforms Walker West’s New Center on Selby Avenue

Walker West Music Academy
$50,000
Transforming the look of Selby Avenue through a large-scale permanent art installation by artist and community activist Ta-coumba Aiken for the exterior of the Academy’s new 6,000-square-foot music center