Arts Activities Support

As a result of this project Six Families established two new partnerships with organizations in the community. Additionally, Six Families supported 4 new collaborative teams of filmmakers and composers and contracted thirteen artists that were new to collaborating with the collective. Several of these artists have made plans to work with the Six Families in the future. In broad terms, we certainly achieved our artistic goals. We presented three events that fulfilled our goals of freedom from standard genres and developing unique formats and themes. In so doing, we supported emerging musicians seeking non-traditional performance opportunities. Our audiences were therefore able to benefit from positive experiences with creative music. To address our goals more specifically, and speak to strengths and challenges, each of our three events will be summarized below: “Solos”: This event achieved its goal of including Issam Rafea, Maja Radovanlija, and Matt Rahaim in an unconventional performance setting at the Omega Collective House in Minneapolis. It also expanded to include a second performance featuring Rafea and guitarist Chris Cunningham at the Khyber Pass Cafe in St Paul, and a workshop with Rafea co-sponsored and hosted by Mizna, and Arab arts organization in St Paul. While our initial plan to have Rafea, Radovanlija, and Rahaim perform a new work together did not come to pass, both performances and the workshop emphasized new collaborative groups. The concert at Khyber Pass Cafe featured spontaneous composition between Rafea and Cunningham. The Omega House performance and Mizna workshop featured new collaborations between Six Families members, local musicians, and featured soloists. While outreach to refugees proved insurmountably challenging, our efforts led to a new partnership with Mizna. “Tinkerfest”: This event achieved its central goals of bringing electronic music and instrument building to a diverse group of youth in an accessible and interactive way. It also achieved its goal of allowing youth to perform using hand-built instruments and electronics alongside older Twin Cities musicians (Mitch Stahlmann and Beatrix Jar). Its ability to empower youth to work creatively using low-cost and “found” electronics to make sounds proved to be an incredible strength. The challenges inherent in working within schools, notably scheduling, space acquisition, and promotion to students, were met with gusto. “Film”: This event achieved its goal of pairing sound and moving-image artists to create unique works not limited by genre. The end result was a diverse array of works including digital media, antique film projection, and live performance that were complimentary in surprising ways. There were many logistical, technical, and artistic challenges in presenting such a program, and the end result was perhaps a bit more heterogeneous than intended. However, we succeeded in providing artists and audience a positive opportunity to engage with novel and provocative intersections of sound and image. In summary, though the scope of some original ideas had to be refined, and some details altered, in order to bring together such a wide-ranging season, the breadth of our vision made for a special, unconventional series. We will learn from the challenges we faced, but would not change anything fundamental about our process. Six Families succeeded in working with several new musicians throughout the season, strengthening our relationships with previous season collaborators, and consistently meeting our new and recurring audience attendance goals. We ended up working closely with high school students through TinkerFest, which was not included in our original proposal. During the workshops at the High School for the Recording Arts we worked with anywhere from 10-20 students each day of the 5-day workshop. The final performance reached ~40 staff and students. While we did not end up reaching refugee communities in a much as we had hoped we did forge a significant bond with Mizna, which we will certainly take advantage of in the future. There will always be a need to strive for more diversity in our audiences, but this year's projects artist/audience diversity significantly surpassed previous years, thanks mostly in part to the funds received from Metropolitan Regional Arts Council. We will cherish and cultivate the bonds established this year, which will inevitably lead to wider and broader reach.