Community art creations for Artify, an Irrigate-funded project in St. Paul.

There’s been a lot of big news coming out of St. Paul’s Springboard for the Arts of late. Last month, Springboard was awarded a $500,000 grant as part of the Knight Foundation’s new $8-million arts initiative in St. Paul. On March 4, Springboard’s executive director Laura Zabel was named a 2014 Bush Fellow, one of the “24 exceptional leaders from across Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and 23 Native nations” who’ll receive open-ended fellowship awards of between $50,000 and $100,000 to further their professional goals and work in the community. According to Pamela Espeland’s reporting for MinnPost, Zabel plans to use her fellowship to “engage with a national network of colleagues to develop strategies to help communities see artists as problem-solvers.”

Speaking of which, in partnership with Knight Foundation and the Detroit-based Urban Innovation Exchange, Springboard just this week launched Creative Exchange. It’s an ambitious online platform “for storytelling and resource-sharing around artists, creativity and community,” combining editorial coverage of artist-led civic engagement projects around the country, and practical offerings that will take the Minnesota-based nonprofit’s toolkits for artist and community resources to a national audience of artists, neighborhood organizations and grassroots creative place-makers. In addition, the website aims to facilitate a forum for cross-pollination and sustained support for those creating such projects by fostering a professional and creative network of member artists and organizations nationwide for peer-to-peer mentoring, shop talk and collaboration opportunities.

In her introductory blog post for Creative Exchange, Zabel writes: “We’ve been able to create programs around artist entrepreneurial development, artists’ access to healthcare, community supported art and artist-driven community development. The more we do this work and grow, the more we want to share our work with others.”

Find detailed information about specific toolkits and resources, artists’ stories and project profiles, organizational partners and other plans-in-progress on the Creative Exchange website.