Irrigate: Black Dog Cafe and Puppet via YouTube Up and down a six-mile stretch in St. Paul, traffic engineers are busy putting together a light rail line that will connect the Twin Cities. It’s a massive infrastructure project. But instead of suffering with an elongated construction site, a group of artists got together to turn the corridor into a public arts project. FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO APPLY FOR AN ARTPLACE GRANT PLEASE VISIT ARTPLACEAMERICA.ORG/LOI Irrigate, a project of Springboard for the Arts, the city of St. Paul and LISC has since seeded 150 projects involving 400 artists, from a community-made textile piece to a large puppet of a black dog that lets customers know a cafe is open during construction. Irrigate was one of the first projects funded by ArtPlace, a collaborative investing in creative placemaking projects that help transform communities. ArtPlace is now accepting applications for funding through Dec. 13. With Knight Foundation as a founder, designating its funding to the eight Knight resident communities, artists and organizations in those cities have a special opportunity for support. So far, ArtPlace has chosen projects that very much reflect the fabric of their community. In Macon, for example, a historic church is becoming a performing arts and multi-use space on the edge of Mercer University. Wanting to capitalize on school spirit and love for Mercer’s football team, they turned a performance ofMoliere’s Tartuffe into a “Tartuffe & Tailgating” event, with a performance followed by a tailgate with the cast and crew.
