Minnesota Native News: Collaboration Brings Arts Festival to The Ave

Minnesota Native News: Collaboration Brings Arts Festival to The Ave

Marie: This is Minnesota Native News, I’m Marie Rock.

Headlines: Organizations along the American Indian Cultural Corridor have collaborated with Northern Lights Dot M-N to bring the late night arts festival… Northern Spark… to Franklin Avenue.

Here’s Reporter Leah Lemm with the story.

STORY #1 - THE AMERICAN INDIAN CULTURAL CORRIDOR JOINS NORTHERN SPARK

REPORTER: This year’s Northern Spark will include artist installations and performances along the American Indian Cultural Corridor on Franklin Avenue in the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis.

The event takes place Friday and Saturday, June 14th and 15th, 9pm to 2am each night.

Sarah Peters 1: (00:54) the theme of the 2019 Festival is we are here, resilience, renewal and regeneration.

Sarah Peters is the co-director of Northern Lights DOT MN, which produces Northern Spark each year.

Sarah Peters: (01:01) that theme was sourced from the communities and neighborhoods and people were the event this year is taking place.

REPORTER: There two other locations included in this year’s Northern Spark. The Rondo Neighborhood in Saint Paul and the Commons in Downtown Minneapolis. All events happen in all three locations on the same nights.

Sarah and her organization did a bunch of outreach in the neighborhoods to hear from the communities.

Sarah Peters: (01:36) we got a whole range of answers back about that that were, um, difficult issues like gentrification and housing and racism, to celebratory issues. which is where those beautiful words like resilience come from.

Sarah Peters: (01:54) we took it to our program council, which is a group of artists that are deeply embedded in their communities, who helped us knit together the theme and to the theme that we have today.

REPORTER: And together they worked to form the theme We Are Here; Resilience, Renewal, and Regeneration. Next, I spoke with someone who was on the program council.

Alex Buffalohead: (06:42) I was actually invited to participate in the planning of the theme, back in the summer.

I spoke with Alex Buffalohead who was one of eight people from the communities that worked on the theme of the festival. Alex is the arts and cultural engagement manager at the native American Community Development Institute or NACDI. NACDI is one of the festival Partners.

Speaker 1: (01:48) one of the first northern sparks, one of the notes, um, was here in the corridor. Um, I believe it was on in the parking lot of all my relations in NACDI but, um, since I've started, the partnership has been really great and um, we've asked for reciprocity and they've definitely delivered that up over and beyond.

REPORTER: Alex speaks very positively about the collaboration which has been built upon a strong relationship between the American Indian Cultural Corridor and the festival staff. Northern Lights has shared its resources with the corridor and has hired from within the community for festival security and tech jobs.

Speaker 1: (05:01) there's just like a collaboration in all levels of the planning of festival.

REPORTER: One of the many artist involved is Jonathon Thunder. His piece is called Manifest’o. Manifest’o is a series of animated short stories that will be projected onto the Many Rivers apartment building both nights of the festival.

The Many Rivers building is right across from the NACDI parking lot, at 15th Avenue South and Franklin Avenue East. But I was told you won’t be able to miss it.

Jonathan Thunder: (04:52) If you get on the Ave, you'll be able to see it from blocks away and it'll include, the imagery that I animated for Manifesto and it will also include the soundscape, which includes Ojibwe language and themes.

REPORTER: Manifesto fits right into the theme of the festival… With the combination of visuals, sounds and language… the stories are representations of a resilient culture.

The animations show Jonathan’s interpretations of stories he heard growing up.

Jonathan Thunder: (02:05) I call them vignettes… that are my interpretation of stories that I've heard in a Ojibwe communities around Minnesota. I wanted to create those vignettes as a way of showing how they influence a culture, which influences artists, consciously or intuitively and how that works shows up in contemporary artwork by artists of native heritage.

REPORTER: For those who can’t make it to Northern Spark, Manifest’o also lives on at the Tweed Museum in Duluth.

REPORTER: For a list of all the artists and more information about Northern Spark, visit: 2019 DOT northernspark DOT org. Northern Spark is free and open to the public.

For Minnesota Native News, I’m Leah Lemm.