With a population of 162,000 that expands by approximately 300,000 annually through tourism, the Brainerd Lakes area is truly a beloved “up north” destination in Minnesota. Brainerd’s emerging Region 5 Children’s Museum (working title) envisions a more connected Minnesota and will actively bring together people from diverse backgrounds in shared experiences through the exploration of northern Minnesota’s rich art, culture, and heritage.
Per Minnesota Law, the Minnesota Humanities Center administers the Arts and Cultural Heritage Rondo Commemorative Plaza grant. The Humanities Center uses a portion of the funds to provide grants administration, including overseeing the proposal process, agreement drafting, financial and program monitoring, and reporting.
Curated by Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay, The Manual will contain ruminations from 9 Southeast Asian artists exploring themes like refugee identity formations, healing, trauma, (re)imaginings, cultural preservation, manifesting new identities, and decolonization. The Manual will combine short films and interactive elements like quizzes, reflective and creative writing prompts, poems, comics, tongue-in-cheek astrological readings, a map on how to find “home,” coloring pages, infographics, etc.
This Legacy grant will focus on the too-often neglected local school districts that have generally not participated in the CDM SSP at the same level as distant schools in surrounding counties. A new CDM interactive exhibit is badly needed to draw back visitors who have been looking for something new at the Museum for children.
The Children’s Discovery Museum (CDM) continued aggressive School Service Program (SSP) enrollment strategies to reach the seven new counties of Becker, Lake of the Woods, Mahnomen, Mille Lacs, Morrison, Todd, and Wadena. A new Wizard of Oz exhibit was mounted in time for the 75th Anniversary Celebration, June 10-14, 2014.
The Children's Discovery Museum in Grand Rapids will build on recent enrollment momentum and further increase participation with its School Service Program, which takes down the economic barriers for visiting school groups. The Legacy grant will fund more educators and facilitators, curriculum development, scholarship aid, transportation assistance, art and teaching supplies, and the addition of a new exhibit to the museum.
The Somali community in Rochester, MN is by far one of the most connected cultural groups in the region. Our project hopes to untangle the rich culture that is often hidden from the public sphere in Rochester, MN. Unity begins with knowing your neighbors. Through the Humanities Center's Cultural Grant we will implement a program to inform and teach our fellow neighbors about the Somali culture. Our platform will be based on speakers, multimedia, tv programming, and print.
This project will connect Somali youth to their rich cultural heritage through arts and language. The Somali Youth Cultural Empowerment project will ensure youth learn their native Somali language and culture through classes taught by Somali teachers and will participate in the cultural tradition of Danta Dance. A dance group will perform at cultural events, with music performed live from previous members of the Somali supergroup, Waaberi, and thus, share Somali art culture with Minnesotans.
The Somali Museum of Minnesota will curate and present two new monthly series of public programs designed to amplify, celebrate, and preserve Somali culture. The first series will be gallery-based and draw from the museum’s collection to offer Somali language, cultural and history instruction targeted to Somali families and school age youth. The second series, designed for a broader audience, will present artist talks and demonstrations, dance performances, exhibitions, and poetry readings.
The goal is to develop a “Basic Somali Language and Culture Class” curriculum. This course will be a tailored 20 – 30-hour training for people in the business community as well as Somali youth. Each class session with have an element of language and an element of culture.
A project that helps families express their feelings through poetry, sharing historical perspectives on disability within the Somali Community. We will invite school administrators, teachers, and community members and discuss the social stigma of disabilities and mental health through innovative strategies. In our parent to parent peer support, we have event nights where parents gather informally and express their daily barriers for the first half of the session, and then we go through resource sharing the second half of the session.
The Minnesota State Legislature asked the Minnesota Humanities Center to award arts and cultural heritage grants to the Somali community through the competitive grant process. Legacy funds are appropriated to the Humanities Center to support such work. A small portion of each appropriation was reserved by the Humanities Center for direct expenses related to administering the grant. Should any portion of this reserve be unused, the difference will be awarded to the respective organizations.
Soomaal proposes to do Spearwave - a monthly intimate exhibition and gathering space for conversations about art and culture. We hope this gesture will foster interconnectedness, and, using Spearwave as a foil, allow these artists a fresh opportunity to experiment with new ways of bringing to you the fruits of their artistic conceptions. In this program 3 Somali emerging artists will get the opportunity to learn, explore and exhibit a concept from beginning to end product.
Ayeeyo Childcare Center is a Somali-American family’s business.Ayeeyo staff and students expressed a desire to work with Speaking Out to create workshops that use storytelling and acting to center Somali stories, language and culture.
The Children's Discovery Museum's (CDM) new 3,000 piece Wizard of Oz (WOZ) collection will be properly archived, conservation materials purchased, and exhibit concept and design drawings completed. CDM facilitators and educators will travel to other children's museums in Minnesota for staff enrichment and professional development.
IX and TQH will collaborate to support the immigrant members of IX who are also part of the queer community. We want to focus on this intersection because IX has a handful of members who embrace this identity and struggle for recognition within their Latinx community. IX will work with TQH to support the intersectional identities of IX members through their claiming of their narratives. This will be done at a December storytelling event of TQH, through IX members (and adding a cross-cultural element) as well as queer Hmong and Somali individuals sharing their stories publicly.
The Children's Discovery Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota will increase access and deepen engagement with their effectively proven School Service Program. The museum will take down the economic barriers and increase enrollment. This grant will fund more educators and facilitators, curriculum development, scholarship aid, transportation assistance and art/teaching supplies.
Every culture engineers. We may use different words and materials, but we all share a need to design solutions to everyday problems. Through the We Are All Engineers project, The Works Museum will leverage the organization’s expertise in elementary engineering education and the cultural knowledge of community partners to co-create and deliver new elementary education programs that align with the cultural benchmarks in the Minnesota State Science Standards introduced in June 2019.
The Minnesota Urban Debate League is an independent program of Augsburg University. We serve over 1,200 students and provide academic debate programming to 40+ Twin Cities high school and middle schools. Two of our programs are designed to specifically address the needs of immigrant communities in Minnesota: The Spanish Debate League and the East African Debate Initiative. Both programs build students’ positive cultural identity while sharpening their academic skills.
The DIAL will collaborate with Hmong artist Tou SaiKo Lee to develop “Ntiajteb Koomtes” (“Unified Worldwide” in English) – a Hmong language program based on Hmong traditional music infused with poetry and hip hop. Project activities include piloting the curriculum, developing media, and evaluating and revising the curriculum through feedback from students, teachers and linguists.
Our project will expand our successful storytelling program to 1) offer more pathways for community engagement with Southeast Asian diaspora stories and cultural arts; 2) increase the number of people we are able to engage through our storytelling program; 3) increase public dialog and engagement with Southeast Asian stories and cultural arts. Our work will bring Southeast Asian diaspora communities together to share cultural arts and stories and to increase accessibility of community stories.
The Minnesota State Council on Disability (“MSCOD”) seeks to preserve and raise awareness of Minnesota’s disability culture in sync with the 25th anniversary of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) through a theatrical production, public opinion survey and research, and an ADA celebration/training conference. Activities will also highlight the low employment rate of people with disabilities. Most of the public activities will occur in the second year of the grant.
The Chicano Latino Affairs Council in collaboration with the Minnesota Humanities Center will use funding to address the education challenges and opportunities faced by Latino students. The central theme and core value is “culture and language matter,” that culture and language is an asset and not a liability. A research project will focus on identifying specific strengths in Latino culture that improve education engagement.
Our project aims to develop free online resources that teach Hmong language and culture to the public. First, printable literacy and cultural decks – for example, flashcards of the Hmong alphabet, or an overview of a prevalent Hmong tradition – available for download on our website. Our second resource include an interactive web app that teaches introductory Hmong language. Users gain literacy skills of consonants, vowels, and grammar, and can also engage in lessons that teach topics such as common greetings, introductions, survival phrases, pronouns, and more.
The Dakhóta Iápi Okhódakichiye will conduct a series of interviews with first language speakers of the Dakhóta language to understand the systematic absence of Minnesota's first language through a Dakhóta lens. The project has three objectives: 1) Understand the systematic absence of the Dakhóta language from Minnesota, 2) Understand language loss and revitalization from a Dakhóta perspective, and 3) Create Dakhóta language curriculum and archive (bilingual) from the transcripts.
Unified Worldwide is a Hmong language Hip Hop project which includes songs accompanied by a curriculum. This is a journey to relearn Hmong language through writing lyrics. A strong focus of songs on this album are "message" and "content" to address social issues, reflect personal stories and preserve cultural identity. This album incorporates collaborations with Hmong elders who are masters of traditional instruments such as rab ncas (mouth harp), lub raj (flute) and xim xaus (violin).
With roughly 70,000 residents, Minnesota is home to the largest Hmong population in the United States. The top spinning game of Tuj Lub (pronounced - too loo) has its roots in Southeast Asia and holds cultural significance to the Hmong community. Formal Tuj Lub courts, constructed near a multi-shelter picnic area at Keller Regional Park, seek
We will prepare resource kits for elementary students which will introduce the traditional arts and crafts of Turkey, as situated within the broader historical and geographical context. Because the kits will meet the guidelines of MN Academic Standards, they can be used in Social Studies and Arts classes as part of cultural diversity activities. The kits will include artifacts, documents, DVDs, curriculum guides and implementation suggestions for students to learn through hands-on experiences.
Tusaalo Mentorship Program is an innovative program developed with the goal of connecting Somali youth with local Somali professionals through culturally-specific and school-based mentorship. In Somali, to be a "tusaalo" is to be an example, which is precisely the role we envision for Somali professionals. Focusing on 9th and 10th graders, our goal is to establish the foundations necessary for increased academic engagement and performance.
Our Space Is Spoken For is a multidisciplinary public art storytelling project to creatively foster largescale awareness and dialogue around the untold narratives of how historically marginalized communities redefine and negotiate space. TCMA will curate a cohort of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) artists and St. Paul BIPOC residents to create public art performances inspired by residents’ stories, which will be filmed and later screened as part of a public event and discussion.
Through our “Somali Language and Culture” gatherings, Central MN neighbors will learn conversational Somali phrases they can share with their colleagues, customers, clients, patients, and/or friends. These gatherings will also include a time of learning about the Somali culture! These sessions will be taught by Farhiya Iman, a member of the St. Cloud Somali community, a Unite Cloud speaker, and a local small business owner.
For this project, we are partnering with a local Somali-owned business, Nori Cafe and Creamery. Nori Cafe and Creamery provides a space that bridges the gap between different cultures through events and an array of coffee, tea, smoothies and cold drinks. Starting this past June, they have hosted bi-monthly “Somali Language Nights” where a local member of the Central MN Somali community teaches Somali phrases to non-Somali community members. #unitecloud has promoted this event on our social media and the response has been fantastic!
Drawing on the power of the humanities, Veterans’ Voices changes the narrative of Veterans and honors their contributions. It empowers Veterans to speak in their own voices through plays, discussions, literature, and the Veterans’ Voices Award. Veterans’ Voices will recognize the next great generation and illustrate that the Veteran’s voice is essential to the work of building our great democracy.
Drawing on the power of the humanities, Veterans’ Voices changes the narrative of Veterans and honors their contributions. It empowers Veterans to speak in their own voices through plays, discussions, literature, and the Veterans’ Voices Award. Veterans’ Voices will recognize the next great generation and illustrate that the Veteran’s voice is essential to the work of building our great democracy.
Veterans' Voices: Native Warriors will give Native American students in Minnesota the opportunity to hear memories and stories directly from Native American veterans from within their communities. Funds will also be used to create radio segments featuring the Native American veterans sharing their personal experiences in their own words. These segments will air statewide and be archived online giving all Minnesotans access now and in the future.
Soccer is important to Somali culture and the most popular sport in Somalia. The proposed activity is our 11th annual Thanksgiving tournament. In order to make the popular tournament a more holistic community event, we will incorporate Somali singers and poets into the soccer tournament program.
West Bank Athletic Club (WBAC) will expand its popular, ten-year running Somali youth soccer tournament into a comprehensive cultural heritage festival that includes Somali-specific sports, arts, and cultural activities. The 2021 WBAC Summer Festival will include a soccer tournament, live Somali music, interactive workshops, speakers, and a variety of arts and cultural activities led by youth.
