Minneapolis’ Cultural Districts Arts Fund returns for its second year to award artists and cultural centers grant money to begin and grow their work.
Ben Johnson, the director of Minneapolis’ Arts and Cultural Affairs Department, said the grant program was one of the department’s first initiatives to invest in the artistic and cultural centers across the city.
“We take the stance that artists and cultural spaces are the first responders in their community, they’re the frontline workers in their community, they know best how to program and heal their community,” Johnson said. “They are and they have always been culturally rich, but resource-starved.”
The grant awarded $690,000 to artists and cultural centers in Minneapolis’s seven cultural districts in 2024, Johnson said. This year, the city is adding $10,000 to the fund, rounding out the total to about $100,000 for each of the city’s seven cultural districts.
The Arts and Cultural Affairs Department is accepting 2025 applications until April 15 for festivals and cultural spaces, and pop-up art projects.
Norway House, a modern Norwegian art and cultural center on Franklin Avenue, was one of the 2024 grant recipients. Heather Vick, a fundraising coordinator for Norway House who oversaw the center’s grant application, said Norway House wanted to showcase its role as a place for making memories.
“It was really important to them to bring people in to see the space and for people to learn that this is a place that they could gather with friends and family,” Vick said.
Vick said the application process was tedious, but city staff were enthusiastic and communicative with applicants.
Grant recipients ranged from individual artists, community cultural centers, and art and culture festival programs, with grant awards ranging from $5,000 to $16,700, according to Meena Mangalvedhekar, program manager for the Arts and Cultural Affairs Department.
Nonprofit after-school program 826 MSP, which teaches kids, many of whom are Somalian and East African, how to lead and express themselves through writing, received a $5,000 grant.
Executive director of 826 MSP Jamal Adam said the program is meant to help kids develop as individuals through writing.
“We do a unique work in that we focus on writing, but as an artistic expression and academic development for the students we work with,” Adam said. “We try in everything we do to center the voices of the youth we serve.”
Derek Davidson, 826 MSP’s program director, said they decided to apply for the grant because the program does the exact work the city was looking to fund.
“The need for the work we do, it’s always bigger than our resource system,” Davidson said.
“Every time we find out about support out there, we try to get it because there area lot more students that we could work with if we had the resources to build our capacity.”
Norway House won a $5,000 grant, Vick said, which the center used to hold a free gingerbread-making event and will be reapplying for a Cultural Districts Art Fund grant this year.
“That was the main thing, (that) we could have the community in for some really wonderful times and they wouldn’t have to pay a thing,” Vick said.
Based in the Seward neighborhood, 826 MSP used their $5,000 grant to publish a collection of kids’ work in its yearly zine and bring in local artists to teach the kids, Davidson said.
Johnson said the grants offer a huge return on investment because, by funding Minneapolis’s existing artistic and cultural life, the grants encourage the city to grow and prosper.
“As opposed to having no resources that kill that spark of those things, we’re trying to lean in and make sure that people who are interested in transforming their community through the lens of arts and culture are supported,” Johnson said.
