Cultural Districts Arts Fund Initiative - Overview

The Cultural Districts Arts Fund is a new initiative coordinated through the Arts & Cultural Affairs Department of the City of Minneapolis. This initiative aligns with the City’s Comprehensive Plan: Minneapolis 2040 Policy 34 “Cultural Districts” to help the local community tell its story in imaginative ways, activate the neighborhood’s connectivity through partnerships and collaborations, and cultivate new arts and thought leaders in their community—leaders who are driven by the desire to make their community a better place to live by expanding its creative capacity.

The overarching purpose is to provide local artists, creative entrepreneurs, arts advocates, and arts & culture service organizations with community-building opportunities through a series of financial awards to:

• Uplift the cultural identity of city areas where a significant portion of the population is comprised of people of color, Indigenous people, and/or immigrant (POCII) communities.

• Remediate patterns of systemic and institutionalized discrimination, disinvestment, economic exclusion, and disenfranchisement of peoples and identities that have been suppressed and erased.

• Partner with the Cultural Districts residents, cultural workers, artists, entrepreneurs, businesses, institutions, neighborhood councils, and other levels of government to elevate the district’s cultural and linguistic identity.

• Provide a flexible response to help Cultural Districts develop and support an economic climate that sustains and nourishes local businesses.

• Offer creative, engaged, and inclusive approaches toward fostering a renewed sense of arts-based vitality, well-being, safety, belonging, and social connectivity for the communities within and surrounding the Minneapolis Cultural Districts.