The Paradise Center for the Arts puts on a radio show in 2021.
Arts
By BETH FORKNER MOE Guest Contributor
A
fter almost two years of being mostly distanced from others, regional arts nonprofit leaders are looking most forward to in 2022 is engagement – engagement with audiences, with artists, with the community. That’s what all the people we talked to said, without prompting. The pandemic has forced the organizations to become creative in how they connected with people, and they were able to do so, yet the in-person connections were starkly missed. FORKNER MOE The organizations all were able to maintain some sort of programming, and were able to stay financially afloat, when no one
10
Laudren Winder, Benjamin Boucvalt, Alex Campbell, Brittany Proia, William Sturdevant rehearse under tents at the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona. (Photo courtesy of GRSF)
leaders optimistic for future after adjusting in 2021
anticipated when everything closed down abruptly in March 2020. Many organizations received donations from people who had supported them in the past, or even from people they hadn’t known before. Often, people who had already purchased tickets for planned events allowed the organizers to simply keep the money from those tickets. Additionally, many funders changed priorities and made more grant money available to non-profit organizations, often in the arts. Finally, government funding (through the Payroll Production Program and – most recently – the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program, both through the Small Business Administration) helped tide organizations over. (The 410 Project, however, was not eligible for much of this funding, since they are volunteer-run and had no paid staff to retain). We interviewed four arts leaders and asked them how they shifted programming during the pandemic, what they are doing now, and what the near future looks like for their organizations. Our conversations are edited for clarity.
J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 2 | W W W. S O U T H E R N M I N N SCENE. C O M
410 Project Community Art Space - Mankato Dana Sikkila, Executive Director “We cancelled exhibits and events from March until late fall 2020. We had to figure out the reality of our space. When we were closed, we had donations from individuals in the community, from $5 to $100, enough to pay our rent. (When we made the decision to open) people were in need of activities and a safe way to participate. We had exhibitions, but no receptions or events. We did engage with our artists, often in social media. (We did) a lot of social media – Facebook Live, videos with artists, and more. This was manageable for us and the artists, and it was safe for the community. We also did a lot of virtual programming on Zoom, including artist statements, artist education, and sharing of professional practices. We qualified for some small artist grants (but not those that require an organization to have paid
staff). We are funded by the community, which tells us how the community feels about us. We’re important to a lot of people. We’re completely volunteer-run, by a group of people who really care about what they’re doing. This is hard to sustain, but we’ve been open since 2003. People care about us; we pay our bills from people who donate to us, and we’ll be open as long as we can. Almost everything we do is free, unless there are costs for materials. We get some grants to pay our teachers, but they generally donate it back, because they want us to be sustainable. Right now, we still don’t feel back to normal. Things fluctuate every couple weeks. People get sick, but as younger people get vaccinations, they have more access to us. Going forward, we want to ideally continue to provide space for anyone who is creative, people who are making things and made things through the pandemic.” (NOTE: Sikkila is on the board of Minnesota Citizens for the Arts, which lobbies the Legislature for such things as the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment. This was passed in 2008, and the arts
YOUR GUIDE FOR PLACES TO GO AND THINGS TO DO.
