“To be leaders, to show the right path,” Mike Laverdure hopes today’s teens will say—and he’s guiding them to that dream. 

Laverdue, an architect and owner of DSJW and First American Design Studio, co-founded Indigenous Design Camp. It’s a free, week-long summer intensive for Native high school students. The volunteer-run camp, which is the first of its kind in the U.S., wrapped up its second year in Minneapolis, Minnesota. 

Throughout the week, the teenagers set up (day) camp at Dunwoody College of Technology’s architecture studios. They created projects and models using scale and measurements; they checked out the University of Minnesota’s architecture program and learned from Indigenous architecture; and Native designers visited and presented. 

Photo Credit: Indigenous Design Camp

“I think a lot of us on reservations don’t get to see that. We only see a few different careers. . .we don’t see architects, we don’t see landscape architects, we don’t see interior designers. We don’t even run into a lot of engineers,” Laverdure says, noting there are only about two dozen Native architects in the whole country. “And 20 years from now, there’ll be hundreds.” 

He and the Indigenous Design Camp crew are starting small: Last year, around 10 kids participated. That’s just about doubled this summer. 

Photo Credit: Indigenous Design Camp

Co-founder Jessica Garcia Fritz is an assistant professor and an architectural educator. The citizen of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe says the camp lets these students—and over a dozen architects—gather in community. 

“I also see the camp as an alternative and a way to build a collective of Indigenous architects and designers who may view the environment, and certainly the built environment, in a different way—one that needs to be stewarded, taken care of,” she says. 

Students at the camp learn about Indigenous design principles. Garcia Fritz says they contrast western architecture’s often destructive and exclusive nature. 

“It’s not looking at dominance over the land, dominance of relationships. I think that it’s—and this has always been a part of our cultures—looking at working with relationships, working with the land,” Garcia Fritz says. 

Another co-founder and architect, Sam Olbekson of the White Earth Nation, says this camp helps students see themselves in not only architecture, but the architecture they create. It’s about sovereignty. 

“It’s my first time doing anything architectural—I’m excited to get that hands-on experience,” a participant from Elk River, Minnesota, shared on the camp’s website.  

“To design for themselves, to speak for themselves, to create the ideas and concepts,” Olbekson says. “They don’t see boxes. They see the shapes, the colors, the patterns, the symbols when appropriate, or not. That makes them feel at home.” 

Photo Credit: Indigenous Design Camp

Photo Credit: Indigenous Design Camp

Photo Credit: Indigenous Design Camp

Photo Credit: Indigenous Design Camp

Indigenous Design Camp can be a major catalyst for many of these aspiring students, Laverdure says.  

“Because as Native architects and designers, we’re the ones who really are the change makers and the nation builders for our tribes,” he says. “So to me, it is just kind of that first initial step into creating an environment where we take control of our own progress, our own generations, our own future.” 

The post Designing the Future: Indigenous Design Camp Inspires Young Architects appeared first on Arts Midwest.

Welcome to Camp Milkweed. 

“It’s fun. We do lots of art,” camper Iris says as she promenades along a wildflower-dotted path. 

Alongside 10 other kids, Iris had just come from the creekside, crafting natural clay pots and flower wreaths. The Nature’s Pallette camp, one of three summer day camps, is hosted at Shoreview Natives in small-town Two Harbors, Minnesota. It just wrapped up its very first year. For three weeks, children ages 6 to 12 explore acres of wooded play space with a creative lens.  

Photo Credit: Amy (frankie) Felegy

Photo Credit: Amy (frankie) Felegy

Photo Credit: Amy (frankie) Felegy

Photo Credit: Amy (frankie) Felegy

Why art and nature? 

“It just made sense,” says camp teacher and artist Jen Dietrich, who has long taught art. “We’re really focusing on drawing from life—looking at something and not what you think it looks like. Like a tree: not a triangle on top of a stick, but drawing the shapes and contour line drawing.” 

During the seven-hour days, the children follow a loose but thought-out outdoorsy schedule.  

An illustrator and children’s book author came to read ‘Pollywog! Not a Frog’ to the group. At one point, the children started a band using sticks and rocks. They named the combo “The Woodpeckers” as they tapped branches onto trees, a makeshift drum set. Camp teacher and outdoor educator Mabel Smebakken says she promotes free play among campers because it encourages creative thinking. 

“We’re trying to have them figure out what they want to do next rather than always looking to an adult.” 

Photo Credit: Amy (frankie) Felegy

Photo Credit: Amy (frankie) Felegy

Photo Credit: Amy (frankie) Felegy

Photo Credit: Amy (frankie) Felegy

Photo Credit: Amy (frankie) Felegy

Photo Credit: Amy (frankie) Felegy

Kids found and decorated walking sticks, painted rocks, filled out sketchbooks, and got their wiggles out with active games. There are hammocks throughout the woods for a soft, reflective landing place in between bursts of youthful activity.

“I wish I had this as a kid,” says Smebakken. “But I like having this opportunity to show them the lifecycle of plants. We kind of go through what happens to a flower after it dies, what comes next?”

(Hint: The flower will leave seeds behind, ready to germinate in the next year or two.) Much of the camp is about slowing down, noticing nature, and embracing the quiet.

“For this activity we’re going to take four sticks,” says Smebakken, explaining the Crime Scene Investigation: Nature Version activity to the campers.

“And you’re going to make a little square. And that’s your crime scene. And it’s going to be a journaling session, but with your sketchbooks. The goal is to look really carefully at your spot . . . to see what the heck is growing and going on in your little square.”

Through this, camp Milkweed participants learn to temper a busy world. They explore nature through soft, artful discovery. To create, evidently, is also to absorb.

The post Young Minnesota Campers Find Art in Nature  appeared first on Arts Midwest.

Taking part in creative activities at all stages of life positively impacts individuals as well as the communities they live in. Research says:

• Participating in 1–3 hours of weekly arts activities can help prevent cognitive decline in older adults, similar to the benefits of 1 hour of exercise.
• For teens, frequent arts participation helped to improve social connections and enhance flourishing.
• Across populations, ongoing cultural engagement like arts, crafts, volunteering, and community groups was associated with fewer emergency room visits and shorter hospital stays.
• Being part of community art groups has been linked to feeling happier, more satisfied with life, and having a stronger sense of purpose.

Music & Mental Health In Northern Minnesota

On this episode of Filling The Well, we talk with Sam Miltich, a professional jazz guitarist from rural Minnesota who lives with schizophrenia. Sam shares how he’s found solace in nature and how he’s been able to balance his music career and mental health.

This episode contains discussion about attempted suicide.

Listen Now

The post Midwesterners Embrace Art to Improve Community Health and People’s Wellbeing appeared first on Arts Midwest.

He and his fiancée, Ash Stewack, make art for others: for businesses, passersby, and neighborhoods. And most of the time, you won’t even find their signature at the bottom right of the piece. 

The Chicago-based sign painters at Fire Signs design, plan, and hand paint pieces across the city. Founded in 2018, their small business runs out of their at-home basement studio. It all bloomed from Stewack seeing the Sign Painters documentary in college and Ozawa’s love for painting motorcycles. The flames were fanned.  

Photo Credit: Fire Signs

Photo Credit: Fire Signs

Photo Credit: Fire Signs

Photo Credit: Fire Signs

Photo Credit: Fire Signs

Stewack apprenticed for two years before co-founding Fire Signs, named for the Aries-Leo astrological couple. Ozawa and Stewack paint windows, murals, logos, menus—each brushstroke done by hand.  

“The physicality and tangibility of sign painting definitely offers more of a human centeredness of art,” Stewack says. 

In a digital age with things accessible on-demand, Ozawa adds, “People really like crafted, human made things that have a quality to it that you don’t get with mass production.”  

And each design is completely tailored to their clients. “We’re really a part of their story,” he says. 

A Long-Lasting Craft 

Hand-painted signs have been central advertising mediums throughout Midwest and world history. Scattered across the region, you can still see “ghost signs”—paintings of pre-billboard past, often peeling and faded. 

Sharp Signs owner Kelsi Sharp says sign painting is placemaking. Hand-creating signs and murals (old and new) defines neighborhood character and community. That’s essential for “people who are craving agency in their neighborhood (as residents, renters, and homeowners) and who want to define the character of their specific district,” the Minneapolis artist says. 

Sharp argues sign painting isn’t necessarily having a comeback. But it is more visible with the exposure help of social media. 

Photo Credit: sharpsigns.com

Photo Credit: sharpsigns.com

Photo Credit: sharpsigns.com

Photo Credit: sharpsigns.com

Photo Credit: sharpsigns.com

Photo Credit: sharpsigns.com

“People were doing this for a job long before reels on Instagram and TikTok posts, and they’ll be doing it long after into the next thing,” Sharp says, noting her place in it all. “I’m helping to define the character. I’m helping to perpetuate this craft . . . It’s so much bigger than me. Some signs that I paint, I hope, will outlive me.” 

To her, hand painting is personal to clients and communities—so much so that she considers each piece like a birth. 

“I’m really like, “OK, I’m going to bring this thing into the world. I’m going to do it with so much care. We do have a deadline that is approaching, usually less than nine months away,” Sharp says. “I’m a doula birthing these signs into the world.” 

The post More Than a Sign: Midwest Artists Hand-Paint Local Identity appeared first on Arts Midwest.

Lakewood Cemetery’s very first artist-in-residence program kicked off this spring. Four local artists (selected through a public open call) host events and create work throughout the year at the 250-acre site. It’s believed to be the first of its kind in the Midwest; there are two on the east coast. 

“Death is one of our few constants between everyone. We all will experience it at some point,” says Amanda Luke, the cemetery’s community engagement manager. “And I think it’s a no-brainer to utilize these spaces as community sites for conversations (and) artist workshops.” 

Photo Credit: Bre McGee of Uncommon Collaborative

Luke says over 70 artists applied for the residencies, which focus on remembrance, grief, and the cycle of life and death. While the residency is new this year, she says it’s hard not to imagine it becoming a staple. Art and cemeteries have long been allies—especially at Lakewood, which is more than 150 years old. There are sculptures and elegant gravestones throughout the cemetery, which doubles as an arboretum.  

“We have beautiful art all across the grounds. It’s kind of hard to miss,” Luke says. “It’s like a museum where you can actually gently touch the art . . .  it gives you a new way to just think about these spaces as artistic spaces.” 

Meet the Artists 

As part of her residency, longtime visual artist Diana Eicher collects would-be composted, post-funeral flowers. With them, she hand-makes paper that people can take home. By next spring, she’ll have a collection of tree and floral artwork, inspired by the cemetery, printed on that petal paper. 

Photo Credit: Diana Eicher

“One of my motivations was . . . to also honor and memorialize the people whose loved ones are being buried and commemorated at Lakewood without actually attaching names to them,” Eicher says.  

Another artist-in-residence is improvisational musician Sarah M. Greer. She leads song circles at the cemetery chapel by taking grief-adjacent sounds and distilling them into songs. She’ll then write that translation on a notecard for participants, like: ‘Sing a falling, two-note pattern for a relatively long period of time.’ 

“I got curious about if we could make music from the sounds that we use to express sorrow and in so doing, if the sounds themselves were part of how we digest and transmute sorrow,” the composer says.  

Photo Credit: Bre McGee of Uncommon Collaborativev

Photo Credit: Bre McGee of Uncommon Collaborative

Photo Credit: Bre McGee of Uncommon Collaborative

The other artists in residence are Andrew Grum Carr, reflecting on loss through an essay and seasonal watercolor paintings; and RJ Kern, a Chromoskedasic photographer creating abstract images of “impermanence and rebirth.” 

In their own ways, these artists transform grief into a kind of wonder. A space to create—sometimes collectively—from a gaping hole. These life cycle-focused expressions let us sit with our big, heavy questions, especially if we do not have the answers. They invite some solace into bereavement’s blues, and its beauty. 

The post Artists Bring Life to Death at Midwest’s First Cemetery Art Residency  appeared first on Arts Midwest.

“We hold this role as a sacred duty to work to create a world our descendants can be proud of,” says Rae Rowe, co-founder and executive director.

As a community-centered mutual aid and arts movement with the health of the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community at its core, The Paper Lantern Project’s work reaches far and wide.

Their programming centers gender and reproductive justice, focusing on culturally nuanced care and resources, and they’ve organized zines, art shows, and community care clinics.

“After the shootings in Atlanta, we saw a vacuum in Minnesota, because we realized people stopped paying attention here, as far as gender and reproductive rights were concerned,” says Rowe.

“They heard that Minnesota was a trans refuge state, and that Roe v. Wade had been codified here. They really thought that provided enough protection for us, while at the same time, we were hearing from members of our community that they didn’t know what reproductive justice was; that they were having trouble paying their bills.”

Though the organization came to be in the spring of 2024, Rowe and co-founder Lynn Nguyen had already been building the idea for years.

“When we started The Paper Lantern Project, we really viewed this as an opportunity to create new narratives by breaking down barriers and stigmas [around reproductive health] and providing accessible programming,” Rowe says.

Since its inception, The Paper Lantern Project has embraced art as a vehicle for their work. In addition to hosting workshops and shows, they also sell stickers with art designed by queer AAPI artists to support their mutual aid fund.

For them, it’s more about the process of art making than the product—it’s a way for the community to share their stories in a comfortable way. 

“We realized that sometimes the barriers and stigmas are so huge that people really don’t know how to access their own stories… but if you ease someone into it through the arts, it makes it more accessible for all of us,” says Rowe.

“We want people to really take time to develop their own stories. We like art to be slow and intentional. In that trust building process, it’s been really, really important.”

Photo Credit: Pader Xiong

Photo Credit: Pader Xiong

Photo Credit: Aaron Nesheim / Sahan Journal

Fifty years since the first Southeast Asian families settled in Minnesota, The Paper Lantern Project is honored their roots this summer with the opening of a groundbreaking art show; Alternate Routes, which ran for the month of June at St. Paul’s XIA Gallery & Cafe.

A celebration of queer Southeast Asian (SEA) creativity and curiosity, it featured paintings, poetry, video art, and more. Although the show was conceived in honor of the milestone year for the Minnesotan Southeast Asian community, it featured work from artists from around the country and world.

This was their second art show in as many months, with May having seen a gallery presentation of a queer reimagining of their inaugural “Cut Fruit” zine.

To Rowe and Nguyen, these opportunities for artistic expression have always been intrinsically tied to the mutual aid movement itself.

“When people are confident in their own gender and reproductive justice stories, we can advocate for the care that we deserve.” says Rowe.

The post Meet the Minnesotan Org Centering Ancestors, Art, and Activism appeared first on Arts Midwest.

They turn liquids into solids. They rebirth grass into paper, then into beautiful wildflowers. And maybe most importantly, they help change minds. 

Photo Credit: Paper Plains via Ready Go

Meet Anna Haglin and James Kleiner, the Minneapolis, Minnesota, artist duo behind Paper Plains. It’s a, well, grassroots LLC collecting invasive stalks and leaves, then hand making paper (embedded with native wildflower seeds) from the pulp. 

“You’re turning something that’s hard on the ecological system into something that is really beneficial,” Haglin says.  

Photo Credit: Paper Plains via Ready Go

‘A Patch of Pocket Prairie’

In 2019, while working as a printmaking professor in Moorhead, Minnesota, Haglin received a grant to collaborate with Kleiner on a rural artist project. Those funds, from the Ready Go Art program, have turned into a Kleiner-built mobile studio visiting county fairs and libraries statewide, teaching hands-on how to make this paper.

“It’s been really interesting traveling to all these towns of 500 or 1000 people and making paper out on the street . . . outside of what is usually a very niche space. You’re making paper at a university; it’s not really reaching these teenagers that are walking around outside,” Kleiner says.

That community education aspect is their way to share how invasive plants affect the ecosystems we call home, and what we can do about it. Less than 2 percent of Minnesota’s native prairieland is alive and well today.

“So it does feel like a small contribution, just planting a patch of pocket prairie in your yard. But I think if enough people do it, it does really add up,” Kleiner says.

The couple finds reed canary grass—which, yes, is often native to the state (there are two populations) but the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources says the species is prolific. It suppresses other native plants, especially in wetlands, and threatens biodiversity.

“One of the difficult things about communicating about climate change is how overwhelming and sad it can be for folks . . . but then there are some things you can do that are joyful,” Haglin says. 

‘Making a Grass Smoothie’ 

The artists burn the roots and seeds of the invasive grass, then chop the stalks and leaves to process them. They get boiled in soda ash, mixed with flax or cotton fiber for strength, and blended up. 

“I always kind of joke with people that we’re making a grass smoothie,” Haglin says.  

Photo Credit: Paper Plains via Ready Go

Then the juice is pressed into sheets and mixed with native wildflower seeds before drying for several hours. Once dried, participants can display the paper, write or draw on it, or plant it in the yard (autumn is best.)  

“Art is such a useful way to connect with people who are different than you while you’re all doing something bizarre. And I feel like the act of paper making with invasive plants is something that you can all connect about. We’ve all seen or pulled weeds,” Haglin says. “And that inroad of relatability really helps you learn more about each other.” 

The post Transforming Invasive Plants into Paper That Grows Wildflowers  appeared first on Arts Midwest.

It’s a global, grassroots celebration of the everyday joy of making music—any music!

To mark the occasion, we’ve rounded up six stories that celebrate the Midwest’s musical makers and rich musical histories. Think of it as a little nudge to make some music of your own this weekend.

Check out Make Music Day for event listings in your city.

Photo Credit: NBC

1. How Ohio Funk Changed the World of Music

The Great Migration, which saw millions of Black Americans move north during the early to mid-20th century, led to a flowering of musical movements across the Midwest. It led to Chicago blues (think Muddy Waters) and the Minneapolis Sound (think Prince).

In Ohio, there was funk: insistently rhythmic, flamboyantly fun, and forward-looking in its use of audio effects. Artists like Ohio Players, Zapp, Lakeside, Faze-O, Sun, and Slave came out of the Dayton area and hit airwaves across the country in the 1970s and ’80s.

Read the full story here.

Photo Credit: Dennis J. Neumann

2. Over 100 Years in the Making: The Lakota Song Repatriation Project

In many Indigenous cultures, ceremonies and traditions are paired with music. You cannot have one without the other. The beat of the drum represents the human heartbeat. The song is the prayer. The language is the foundation of those prayers.

But what happens when the language—and with it, the songs—is disappearing?

A Lakota language revitalization project in Bismarck is working to keep these important vocal traditions alive.

Read the full story here.

Photo Credit: Woolsock Facebook

3. Bare Feet and Banjos Meet at Woolsock, a Winter Festival

Woolsock is an annual celebration of Midwest winter—and the dancing, old-time music-making, and community building that can (and does) still happen in the gray hues of early January.

Participants play and dance to old-time music, whch has roots that span across Africa and Europe. It often features the fiddle, banjo, harmonica, upright bass, and maybe a harmonica or mandolin.

North American old-time music comes with its own unique culture of accompanied dance like square dancing and clogging. Songs carry stories and traditions, and get you moving.

Read the full story here.

Photo Credit: Rock The Rez

4. Rock The Rez Brings Power Chords to Indigenous Kids in South Dakota

This rock camp aims to empower Indigenous girls, two-spirited, transgender, and gender diverse youth in a safe space where they can raise their voices—and crank the amps.

The program also ensures that campers connect with musical role models within their own communities.

“We try to invite one local Indigenous band per day of camp for a lunchtime performer,” explained Matson. “The campers are always really excited to meet them, and then you say, ‘This person lives here, lives in this place where you live.’”

Read the full story here.

Photo Credit: Frank Weidman

5. Meet Todd Perrine, the DJ Helping to Sustain Toledo Nightlife

Step into Wesley’s Bar and Grill in downtown Toledo on a Friday night and you’ll find it packed with people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s moving to a soundtrack unlike anything else playing at surrounding establishments.

Through the crowd, which reaches between 200 and 300 people most weeks, you’ll find Todd Perrine—AKA DJ Sandman—the proverbial man behind the curtain pulling the strings, crafting in real-time the musical mood that carries the night forward.

Read the full story here.

Photo Credit: Kat and the Hurricane Facebook

6. Midwest Made: New Local Music to Add to Your Playlist

If you had an embarrassingly meager number of Midwestern artists on your year-in-review playlist, this one’s for you. We scoured the internet (and your hot tips) for the best new Midwest-made music to listen to in 2025.

Here’s a sampling of artists from the Dakotas to Ohio.

The post Celebrate Make Music Day, the Midwestern Way appeared first on Arts Midwest.

A new national study by SMU DataArts named six Midwestern communities among the Top 40 Most Arts-Vibrant Communities of 2024, recognizing places where the arts are thriving thanks to strong local investment, engaged audiences, and a high concentration of creative activity.

These rankings aren’t just about size or star power. SMU DataArts evaluates communities using 13 indicators of arts vibrancy, including supply, demand, and public funding, adjusted for population and cost of living.

Here’s how the Midwest stacked up:

We’re proud to see so many Midwestern communities recognized, and we’ve been lucky to tell stories from many of these vibrant places. Dive into a few of our favorites!

You can check out the full Art Vibrancy 2024 report on the SMU DataArts website.

The post Six Midwest Cities Among the ‘Most Arts-Vibrant’ in the US appeared first on Arts Midwest.

“I turned around to apologize to the guy behind me. I said, ‘I just want to sing, but it will sound really bad,’” Holmes says. 

“My voice was lovely, but Parkinson’s stole that from me.” 

In the past couple of years, she’s somewhat reclaimed that voice—in large part thanks to Parkinsong Choir in rural Washburn, Wisconsin. Last year, it sprouted from a network of choral groups across the Midwest (and world) for folks with dementia and their caretakers. 

Eyleen Braaten is the executive director of that parent network: Giving Voice, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In it, she sings with her dad, who has dementia. 

“[It] is an opportunity to have a human-centered approach to creating programs that really bring wellbeing to people that are often told that they don’t have too much to give,” Braaten says of Giving Voice, which offers free toolkits for communities looking to start their own choirs. 

Photo Credit: Courtesy Giving Voice

Getting your song on is proven to boost memory and overall health, especially in cases of dementia, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Polls show music (even just listening) is especially remedial with older adults. Music is social. Active. Even scientific. 

It’s something Stephanie Johnson knows well. In 2009, the board-certified music therapist founded Music Speaks and has worked with clients struggling with communication, memory, learning, early development, mental health … the list goes on. 

“If the brain is not operating in a way that it used to, due to a physical traumatic injury or a stroke or Parkinson’s or dementia, we can incorporate music and help pull the information from a healthy part of that brain back into processing, whether it be speech or motor or cognition,” Johnson says. She’s helped nonverbal clients sing, even when speech remains difficult. 

Photo Credit: Courtesy Music Speaks

Think of the alphabet, she says: Would you have been able to memorize those 26 letters, in order, without that kindergarten-famous alphabet song? 

Johnson’s team of music therapists works across the Midwest and beyond, adjusting song tempo and dynamics to meet client needs. But folks without this care access, a local choir, or even a diagnosis can still reap musical benefits.  

Anyone can queue up a beat (may we suggest our Essential Midwest playlist?) and let the brainwaves work their magic. 

“Most often, the western world thinks of music as a song or a genre or an artist,” Johnson says. But what about music as healing? As identity, recovery?  

Photo Credit: Courtesy Giving Voice

Photo Credit: Courtesy Giving Voice

Photo Credit: Courtesy Giving Voice

Singing, especially with Parkinsong Choir, is a source of joy, friendship, and belonging for Holmes: “My voice is not what it used to be . . . It’s still kind of harsh and I have a vibrato you wouldn’t believe,” she says, laughing. 

“But I can sing. And it’s beautiful.” 

Midwest Giving Voice choirs:

The post Song a Day Keeping Doctors at Bay in Midwest Choirs  appeared first on Arts Midwest.