Creative CityMaking

Community Planning & Economic Development

Artists: Sha Cage and E.G. Bailey

City staff: Haila Maize and Kjersti Monson

This artist-staff partnership helped shape neighborhood planning by identifying important community strengths in Cedar-Riverside, a Minneapolis neighborhood that’s been home to new immigrant communities since the late 19th century. The artists used creative methods to identify meaningful assets such as community celebrations, gathering places, creative activities and businesses, shifting how planners serve that community.

Results: Documentation images of artists at work, Link to the Blueprint for Equitable Engagement – Link to artist video

Neighborhood & Community Relations

Artists: D.A. Bullock and Ariah Fine

City staff: Ayianna Kennerly and David Rubedor

This artist team used a colorful podium or “Equity Pulpit” to collect public commentary on the department’s five-year strategic plan for engaging all communities in Minneapolis. The artists used the pulpit at block parties, street corners and neighborhood festivals to collect video comments from community members who were unlikely to take part in traditional engagement methods.

Results: Documentation images of artists at work, Link to the Blueprint for Equitable Engagement – Link to artist video

Information Technology

Artists: Kirk Washington Jr. and Peter MacDonald

City staff: Elise Ebhardt and Otto Doll

The artist team promoted the development of digital literacy skills with a technology/arts festival in the Harrison neighborhood. The festival brought together a unique mix of community residents, technology professionals, local performers and neighborhood artists. The gathering successfully created a transformational space centered on building relationships and community connections while increasing access to technology.

Results: Documentation images of artists’ work

City Clerk

Artist: Jeremiah Bey Ellison

City staff: Anissa Hollingshead and Casey Carl

The artist created a comic book that portrayed the workings of the City Clerk’s office and the City’s legislative process in a clear, simple and engaging way. The comic book reflected electoral engagement as experienced by the community, not the City, to present itself as a relatable and trusted source of information.

Results: Documentation images of artists’ work

Community Planning & Economic Development

Artists: Sam Ero-Phillips, Caroline Kent and Roger Cummings

City staff: Haila Maize

To increase input on a small area plan for Dinkytown, a neighborhood experiencing tremendous growth, this team of artists biked through the area with a “mobile engagement theater.” They captured the attention and voices of a young and diverse population, individuals who typically are not part of the conversation. They also interviewed small-business owners along the Dinkytown commercial corridor. The input they gathered represented 40% of the plan data and brought hundreds of new voices to the planning process.

Results: Documentation images of artist s’ work,| Dinkytown small area plan, | Dinkytown video

Community Planning & Economic Development

Artists: Sam Ero-Phillips, Caroline Kent and Roger Cummings

City staff: Paul Mogush

This artist team helped develop a small area plan for Linden Hills in southwest Minneapolis. The artists interacted with neighborhood residents and worked with schools to engage youth as they shaped the long-term vision for land use, transportation and property development in the Linden Hills area. 

Results: photo documentation

Community Planning & Economic Development

Artists: Ashley Hanson and Wing Young Huie

City staff: Jim Voll

This project was a collaboration between the City of Minneapolis and Hennepin County to rethink land uses and transportation along Penn Avenue North, an important commercial spine in North Minneapolis. The artists engaged with residents and businesses along the corridor in a variety of ways to help them understand the project and express their needs and ideas for economic development, job creation, housing, beautification and livability. The team then circled back with the community to share what they heard. The project also considered transit access in and through North Minneapolis. 

Results: photo documentation from project video of Bus Stop Theatre

Community Planning & Economic Development

Artist: Witt Siasoco

City staff: Joe Bernard

The City wanted to analyze the findings of historic survey work conducted over the past 10 years. To engage residents and get their input on the buildings they thought were important or historically significant, the artist designed and conducted a public engagement campaign. The campaign had high youth involvement and educated residents, businesses, schools and the general public about the research project and the city’s history. The project highlighted the main takeaways from 10 years of survey work and included an assessment of historic public sculpture throughout the city. This process helped shape preservation policy and development opportunities in Minneapolis for the coming generation. 

Results: photo documentation from project

Community Planning & Economic Development

Artist: Diane Willow

City staff: Beth Elliott and Paul Mogush

The project artist worked with CPED planners on the long-range land use and transportation interface between neighborhoods and businesses at five stations on the Southwest LRT line: Royalston Station, Van White Boulevard Station, Penn Avenue Station, West 21st Street Station and the West Lake Street Station. The artist helped planners develop creative and impactful community engagement strategies, and she brought a fresh perspective to station area needs for infrastructure and development.

Results: photo documentation from project

Creative City Challenge

Starting in 2013, this annual public art competition invited architects, landscape architects, urban designers, scientists and artists of all backgrounds to propose ideas for a temporary destination artwork that told a story about the community. The winning artworks showcased local creative talent and became narratives of community identity and the complex relationships within our urban landscape. 

More importantly, the experience gave the winning artists valuable career training and development in the delivery of public art. They received a budget of $50,000 to create and install their artwork, and the experience often served as a launching pad to future professional opportunities.

This program was cut in 2020 as part of the mayor’s revised budget. The budget cuts were in response to the roughly $156 million projected revenue losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We remain committed to artist development and the delivery of public art for and about the community.

Artists: Candida Gonzalez and Mary Anne Quiroz

Location: The Commons

This installation invited participants to heal through play with whimsical interactive “alebrije” — animal sculptures inspired by dream creatures from the Caribbean, Mexico, the Pacific Islands and the Dakota and Anishinaabe peoples and cultures of Minnesota. The piece was installed in the Commons and hosted programming throughout the summer.

Artists: Peng Wu, Zoe Cinel, Preston Drum, Shun Jie Yong, Aki Shibata

Location: The Commons

Made of more than 150 suitcases, this multifunctional pavilion shared the stories of immigrants in Minnesota. Shaped like a house, it was a space for people to come together and explore the concept of home. The pavilion included interactive sculpture, a healing garden, a photo exhibit, a documentary film and a suitcase wall where people could post handwritten stories. It became a summerlong platform for public events and performances by and for immigrant communities.

Artists: Christopher Lutter, Heid E. Erdrich, Kim Ford, Karl Stoerzinger, Coal Dorius 

and Missy Adzick

Location: Convention Center Plaza

Animated and illuminated, these spectacle-scale sculptures of a wolf and moose were constructed of found and recycled materials. Interactive features included stationary bicycles that people had to pedal to start animations of the animals breathing, their beating hearts and an illuminated, rotating Earth. The pedaling also powered a small speaker that played recorded poetry and stories reflecting on our relationship with the animals and the Earth.

Artists: Niko Kubota, Jon Reynolds and Micah Roth

Location: Convention Center Plaza

This 50-foot scale model of downtown Minneapolis was created in collaboration with city residents in a series of build workshops. The artist team collected stories and memories of Minneapolis neighborhoods to create a multimedia interface within the model. The completed project was a landscape of plywood buildings scaled to downtown and surrounding neighborhoods. People could interact with the installation at a multimedia map station, where some of the buildings lit up and  played the neighborhood stories and hopes that workshop participants had shared.