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.

Take Lansing Makers Network in Michigan’s capital city. It’s a 14,000 square foot building with a woodshop, metal shop, jewelry bench, and a place to blacksmith and forge. It boasts a computer-ridden office space, a crafting and sewing room—shall we go on?—an area for 3D printing and laser cutting, an electronics bench, and a space for welding (to name more than a few). 

But it wasn’t always this grandiose (did we mention their digital wood carver?) 

“We started off in a 100-year-old church building with practically no heat, no insulation. Somehow we got off the ground and we got members to join,” says founding member Carl Raymond, who also manages the electronics area and serves on the network’s board of directors. 

Photo Credit: Lansing Makers Network

That was nearly 12 years ago, but the model remains scrappy: The current space is totally volunteer-run, Raymond included, and is funded by grants and membership fees. Volunteers staff the front desk, every area has a manager, and point people are responsible for trainings. 

Lansing Makers Network really is open to everyone. Members can pay $50 per month for entry at specified weekly hours; or for $150 per month, folks can get 24/7 access with their ID cards. But people can also check out 30-day passes at the local library at no cost. 

“We’re a nonprofit, both in spirit and according to the rules,” Raymond says. “We’re not doing this to make money. It can be a lot of work . . . but it’s a lot of fun. I enjoy helping people to learn something new; I enjoy learning something new from someone else.” 

That creative fellowship draws artists, makers, and everyday curious people to these makerspaces. They can try things out, fix something broken, or create something new. It’s not just about having the space and tools, but about having the support, accountability, and/or inspiration. 

Photo Credit: Lansing Makers Network

“It’s not just a building full of tools—it’s a building full of people . . . Everybody here knows how to do something. There’s an awful lot of cross-pollination that goes on,” when exchanging ideas and knowledge, Raymond says. 

He offers advice for inspired people looking to start their own makerspace: Simply know that you can.  

“This is something you can do in your town. It takes a little luck,” Raymond says, like finding the right landlord to start, but he’s “sure in any other Midwestern city, there’s a bunch of people who would love to do something like this.” 
 
Find them, he says: Start small and put in the work to make it happen. You’ll be glad you did. 

Makerspaces are increasingly found in local libraries, colleges, and universities. Here’s a running list of other makerspaces across the Midwest we love! Are we missing any? Tag us on Instagram @arts_midwest or email reporter@artsmidwest.org. 

The post Make That Idea a Reality at a Midwest Makerspace 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.

Wisconsin’s American Players Theatre (APT) has taken this sentiment to heart. Set in the hills of rural Spring Green, roughly an hour from Madison, the classical venue is creating performances, events, and audience experiences with and by deaf artists, reimagining how theatre tells everyone’s story.

In 2023, APT produced Romeo & Juliet, but with a twist: Actor Josh Castille played Romeo, and Robert Schleifer played Friar Lawrence—both deaf performers. “I only did Romeo & Juliet that year,” says Castille, “and Brenda [DeVita] and I had a conversation—what would it mean to have me for a whole season?”

Photo Credit: Liz Lauren / American Players Theatre

And the gears started turning. In 2025, the repertory theatre will showcase the whole spectrum of deafness: Castille returns for Tribes, a story of a deaf son in a hearing family, and to play Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s not theatre for deaf audiences, Castille clarifies—it’s theatre including deaf artists. 

That, coincidentally, makes it more accessible to all: Shakespeare is dense for any theatre-goer, hearing or otherwise, and utilizing ASL (American Sign Language) helps with storytelling, making it both more multidimensional and more digestible.

“Every show, I’m used to finding the cracks in the story and slipping in justification for why this person is deaf,” says Castille. “What’s lovely about Midsummer is that we’re not justifying the deafness. We’re letting Puck be Puck, letting him just exist as this nuanced person, because everyone is that way.”

Photo Credit: Hannah Jo Anderson / American Players Theatre

APT is also running an ASL immersion weekend, August 22-24, 2025. In addition to full ASL interpretation of Tribes and Midsummer, pre-show talks with deaf translators will discuss adapting Shakespeare, and an open “ASL Slam” stage call invites deaf audience members to perform at a partner venue. 

For these shows, captioning services (via GalaPro) will be available, making the text available in real time, on any device, including smartphones. APT started utilizing the service in 2023, making performances accessible for the deaf or hard of hearing—or simply those who wish Shakespeare had subtitles.

APT doesn’t have a term for what it is they’re doing. There was no plan to turn Shakespeare on its heels or break ground via accessibility work.

“We used to say that it was our endeavor to create plays for everyone. That we’re touching on a universal experience,” says Brenda DeVita, artistic director. “But all the people looked like us and lived like us. We weren’t being proactive and insistent on our integrity.”

So, staff started seeking out new ways to tell the human story. “Luckily,” says DeVita, “our audience moves with us because they trust us, and the artists that come to work with us move with us because they trust us. We move at the speed of trust.”

Of course, a widened perspective is only part of good storytelling. “The reason we’re doing it,” says Sara Young, managing director, “is because it makes the stories better. It simply makes them richer for our audiences.” 

The post How Sign is Transforming a Wisconsin Stage appeared first on Arts Midwest.

The waterway is a government-designated National Wild and Scenic River, with all its blues and picture-perfect hues. Scenic is an understatement. Living in the dual-state area, which is 30-some miles northeast of Minnesota’s Twin Cities, is an artist colony of sorts (how could you not be artistically inspired by the views?). 
 
Local arts organization ArtReach St. Croix is helping to connect them. 

Photo Credit: ArtReach St. Croix Facebook

Art to Art 

“Artists often work in isolation, especially in the semi-rural and rural space,” says Heather Rutledge, ArtReach’s executive director. “In the St. Croix Valley, the artists are not parading down the street, but one of the ways that we [connect them] is network building among the artists.” 

Spanning the final 60 miles of the lower St. Croix River in Wisconsin and Minnesota, ArtReach has identified 168 local creatives on its directory. 

Photo Credit: ArtReach St. Croix Facebook

Beyond the interactive list, the Stillwater-based nonprofit heads a mobile art gallery (which often sets up in nearby state parks), an area arts event calendar, and shares artist resources for folks in the region. ArtReach also hosts art at its gallery and month-long NEA Big Read programs. The list truly goes on. 

Distinct Community, Place 

ArtReach’s slogan is “art at every bend in the river”—and it means it. 

“The artists are building these bridges across the river, and see this geography as meaningful. And these programs that ArtReach does reinforce that,” Rutledge says. 

Harnessing multiple counties, small towns, villages—and two states—into a connected art community is special, she says, especially considering the area’s unique suburban-skirt flavor. 

“[We’re] in this liminal space between the metro and fully outstate rural spaces,” Rutledge says.  

“When I moved here, I thought how incredible it was to be in a space that’s very close to the metro and yet a world away,” she says. “The other day I moved an exhibition from the Somerset Library to the Osceola Library, and then I came back to Stillwater. And on that little loop, I saw three different bald eagles.” 

Photo Credit: ArtReach St. Croix Facebook

She says the area sees a big economic impact from the arts, too—measuring nearly $170 million in historic total and employing over 2,000 people in the valley in one year, according to a 2022 Americans for the Arts report. 

Rutledge and the ArtReach team continue fostering what they love best (hint: it’s art!). They continually work with local tourism departments and the National Park Service to set up programming. And “Poets of Place,” the next mobile art gallery, is set for this summer.  

The post This Arts Org is Connecting Creatives Across a River—and State Lines  appeared first on Arts Midwest.

Head down a given street in certain Midwestern cities and you’ll come across (and maybe even step on or roll over) poems. 

Sidewalk poetry programs have risen across the region, stemming from an initiative started in St. Paul, Minnesota by prolific behavioral artist Marcus Young 楊墨 back in 2008. It was the first sidewalk poetry program in the country, inspired by sidewalk contractor stamps. 

“If you can print that in the sidewalks, can you print other things like poems?” he remembers thinking. “It all goes back to our universal desire that when we see wet concrete, we want to put our finger in it and just mark that, ‘I was here.’” 

Photo Credit: Alana Horton, Arts Midwest

Photo Credit: Zionsville Cultural District Facebook

Photo Credit: Public Art St. Paul

Photo Credit: Alana Horton, Arts Midwest

Photo Credit: Everyday Poems for City Sidewalk Facebook

Photo Credit: Zionsville Cultural District Facebook

Public Art St. Paul’s Sidewalk Poetry “allows city residents to claim the sidewalks as their book pages” every spring when the public works department repairs damaged pavement. 

The premise: Invite poets to send in short poems in Dakota, English, Hmong, Somali, and Spanish; choose a handful; create stamps; apply to wet concrete.  

“It has changed a sidewalk repair program and turned it into a publishing force,” Young says. 

Since the program began, it has stamped over 1,200 poems—enough for everyone living in St. Paul to walk to a sidewalk poem in under 10 minutes.  

A four-hour drive east lands you in Appleton, Wisconsin, with its own program inspired by St. Paul’s. The city announced five poetic winners just last week, after a community panel narrowed down submissions from nearly 100. 

“It’s a beautiful art form,” says librarian Peter Kotarba, who works with Appleton’s sidewalk poetry program. “Poetry, especially in sidewalk poetry, is permission. It’s giving people permission to feel maybe what’s in that poem, but also permission to find their own avenue of expression.” 

Kotarba says he only sees programs like these growing. He’s planning to add QR codes on signs near the poems so passersby can hear audio recordings from the authors. And he recently fielded a call from a small city in northern California looking to start a similar effort. 

“It is an opportunity for the reader to step into someone else’s world,” or even just another state, he says, “to see reflections of themselves or others around them.” 

Photo Credit: Alana Horton, Arts Midwest

Young says footpaths can be—and are—more than safe transportation venues. He wanted to instill “elevated, beguiling moments” in someone’s dog-walk or commute. 

“Bring a bit of reassurance, bring a bit of comfort, a bit of delight and mystery to your life,” Young says. “Your life is, yes, this ordinary moment, but it’s also this extraordinary moment.” 

The post Step Into Art: Midwest Cities Turn Sidewalk Potholes into Poetry appeared first on Arts Midwest.

This is about creative reuse centers—about scrappiness, affordable art, and putting the word “trash” to bed. 

With over 100 “art thrift stores” across the U.S., the Midwest is home to nearly a quarter of them. 

One of these locales has been around for three decades in St. Paul, Minnesota. 

Photo Credit: Courtesy Anne Sawyer, ArtStart

Inside ArtScraps ReUse Center are bins—on bins on bins (did we mention bins?)—of yarn, paint, and toilet paper tubes. We’re talking brushes, beads, and bottle caps. The holy grail: 

“Getting people to think outside the box when they think of art making,” says director Anne Sawyer. “And you’re also getting people to think a little bit more about where the things that they’re buying come from.” 

These donation-based stores typically take gently used art supplies, whether traditional or unorthodox, and resell them as-is or rework them into sellable kits. 

Photo Credit: Courtesy Anne Sawyer, ArtStart

Then, let the creativity begin.

“You can walk in there and even if you’re not a trained artist, I think you can get inspired … And that’s what it’s all about. We want everybody to make art and have fun doing it and do it in an environmentally friendly way, if possible,” Sawyer says.

This earth consciousness is major for the Idea Store in Urbana, Illinois. It accepts items most would toss out—bread ties, those mesh bags that hold oranges, or postage stamps.

Collectively, the Idea Store diverted 1,500 pounds of trash—no, treasure!—in just four days. Last year, it took in 64,000 pounds of materials that could have ended up at the dump.

“The more we can help people to see ways of reusing and reducing consumption, the better,” says store president Annie McManus. “I think this is sort of coming back to that time where people utilized all the aspects of something in as many ways possible, in a way of both frugality … as well as the environment.” 

We’ve got inspiration; we’ve got sustainability.  

For Kim Geiser, her reuse store is about those, yes—but it’s also majorly about fun. 

After all, she’s the founder and director of the joyfully named Hello Happiness in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Geiser wants the third space to feel like Walt Disney World—magical and immersive—without that price tag (most things in the store are under a dollar.) 

“It’s more than a thrift store,” she says. “I really wanted to create a space where people could be creative … fully themselves without the cost restrictions … and embrace what makes them a little weirder than the rest of us.” 

Photo Credit: Courtesy Anne Sawyer, ArtStart

Shopkeeper Tips for Opening a Creative Reuse Store

The post Midwestern Reuse Stores Inspire Creativity and Sustainability  appeared first on Arts Midwest.

The fellowship will support 50 seasoned and accomplished jazz artists aged 62 years and older over the next four years. Each artist receives a lifetime achievement award and an unrestricted grant of $100,000. 

“The selection process considered creativity, generational impact, and the realities of being a working jazz musician in America,” stated Joe Petrucelli, Executive Director of the Jazz Foundation of America, in a press release.

“With a sense of consensus and urgency, we celebrate these artists as mentors, trailblazers, and inspirational figures. This fellowship not only recognizes their contributions but also provides much-needed financial security—an all-too-rare resource in the field.”

Photo Credit: Sam Neufeld

Manty Ellis

You’ll often hear “Manty Ellis is Milwaukee jazz” in reference to this 92-year-old guitarist. And rightfully so! Born in the early 1930s, Ellis has been pivotal to the shaping and strengthening of jazz in the city and beyond.

A staple of the local jazz music scene (playing piano in local bands since he was nine!), he also owned Manty Ellis Music Center. It was a regular stop for famous jazz musicians (the likes of Freddie Hubbard, Frank Morgan, Eddie Harris, Sonny Stitt, and George Benson) when they visited the city.

“I had some of the best music come out of the store that you can’t even get recordings of … I’m talking about the heavyweights,” he said in a 2016 interview with Radio Milwaukee.

In 1971, he co-founded a jazz studies program at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music with pianist-educator Tony King. After urban renewal in 1960s devastated Milwaukee’s jazz district, the program helped the resurgence of the jazz scene. In that interview, Ellis said, “People call it jazz, but I’ve always called it Black classical music.”

Photo Credit: Susanna Ronner / ECM Records

Roscoe Mitchell

This master saxophonist was described by the New York Times as a “leader in experimental music for over a half a century” in a 2017 feature. In the interview, the now 84-year-old said, “I’ve always believed in studying music across the board. I’ve never been fascinated with putting myself in certain categories.”

That’s what the Chicago native’s lifelong contributions to music have been—high caliber experimentation and “embracing the plurality of music.”

In the 1960s, he founded the Art Ensemble of Chicago and joined the Association of the Advancement of Creative Musicians as one of its first members. Both groups were known for pushing the boundaries of performance. Some of their records included “unorthodox devices” as toys and bicycle horns, and small playful instruments.

For over six decades, Mitchell has been “a restless explorer of new forms, ideas, and concepts,” according to ECM Records. He’s also spent those years teaching composition and improvisation.

“… one goal has always been to be a really good improviser who really does create spontaneous composition. So I study all the time … There are so many paths to investigate, and not just contemporary paths,” he said.

The post Two Midwesterners Honored for Impact on Jazz appeared first on Arts Midwest.

Buche finds a niche, however, in traditional copper bowl-making.

Photo Credit: Rachelle Baker

The tradition she draws from is her own Potawatomi ancestry—for centuries, Indigenous communities of the Great Lakes have cultivated rich artistic and toolmaking practices thanks to the region’s natural copper deposits. “We are so blessed in the upper Midwest to have this beautiful vein of Lake Superior copper that is 99% pure,” says Buche. “The Creator gives you what you need.”

With copper so pure, no smelting is required. Beautiful bowls can be hammered out with stones found along the shores of the very same lake.

“I love talking to people about the wonderful Indigenous wisdom of knowing millennia ago that copper is antibacterial and antimicrobial and purifies water,” says Buche. “That’s why it’s used in our water ceremony.”

Buche’s relationship to her Potawatomi heritage grew while working with the military, when she connected with Indigenous soldiers. When she returned from Germany, she took her children to powwows and handmade their dance costumes. From there, her artistry blossomed.

“I have always been an artist, and drawn to natural materials, so I found it a very natural transition,” she says. “I love metal—copper in particular—so when I discovered this traditional bowl-making practice using stone tools, I just fell in love.”

Now, Buche teaches at folk schools like the Driftless Folk School in Viroqua, Wisconsin, where her students range from middle schoolers to retirees. Some are Indigenous; many are not. Some travel from across the United States to make a copper bowl, and she’s since tripled the number of classes she offers. She starts each lesson with a greeting in the Potawatomi language before delving into the history, the process, and metallurgy.

“You have to be in relationship with the copper,” she explains. “You have to make sure you are listening when it speaks to you, that you’re paying attention to the relationship between you and how it’s changing with your interaction.”

She reminds students to be kind to themselves. “Everybody goes through what I call the dark night of the bowl,” she says. “There can be a frustrating part in there because you’re using a new set of muscles and a new kind of tool. But I haven’t lost one yet. I believe everybody can make a bowl, and they do.”

Photo Credit: Hanna Agar

Photo Credit: Hanna Agar

Photo Credit: Hanna Agar

Photo Credit: Hanna Agar

Photo Credit: Hanna Agar

Photo Credit: Hanna Agar

Buche was “flabbergasted” to receive the Midwest Culture Bearers Award. “I have been an artist for fifty years. To be acknowledged as somebody worth taking a look at is amazing,” she says. And although teaching has been a cherished part of her career, she looks forward to dedicating more time to her own artmaking.

“Often working with others inspires one’s own imagination, so it’s been a wonderful blessing,” she says. And, “I’m getting to the point now that I don’t have endless amounts of time. I should probably get to it!”

Martha Buche is a 2024 recipient of the Midwest Culture Bearers Award, which celebrates and financially supports the work of Midwest culture bearers and folk arts practitioners.

The Midwest Culture Bearers Award is supported by Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts for project management.

The post Meet Martha Buche, a Potawatomi Artist Teaching Traditional Copper Bowl-Making appeared first on Arts Midwest.

Recent data shows just 18 cents per capita in state spending goes to Wisconsin artists and creative organizations, compared to Minnesota’s $10.07. While there are people trying to raise that number, it will take bi-partisan support to move the needle.  

In the meantime, a group in Milwaukee has found a way to support emerging artists. They’re turning to what Wisconsinites do best: cheese (well, grilled cheese). 

Metal artist Siren is a finalist for this year’s Grilled Cheese Grant—a grant funded by community meal tickets. 

It’s all based on the grassroots Sunday Soup model started in Chicago and seen in cities across the world. The premise is simple: Invite neighbors to a community meal, which they pay a small fee for. Soup (or sandwich, or whatever) eaters vote for an artist project. The money raised goes toward whichever proposal wins. 

Photo Credit: Grilled Cheese Grant

For the Grilled Cheese Grant, artists like Siren anonymously apply and are narrowed down by local jurors. Then, patrons gather for a $10, cheesy, carby meal and vote for their artist of choice. The most votes mean, respectively, the most money, and so on. 

That money is a big deal for these artists, often Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD) students like Siren.  

“I’ve always been somebody who works with the scraps that are left at the school, so funding has always been definitely an issue,” they say. 

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the artist

Community Supported Art

“It would just help a lot for me to be able to work on projects that interests me and further explore what I can do with metal without having to think about the debt of paying back the school for the material to use.” 

Siren’s works are often wearable metal pieces. It’s symbolic for them. 

“Struggle is often masked,” they say. “A lot of people like me put on a brave face, or we think that we’re supposed to wear our paint on our chest and kind of have it there until it goes away, but it doesn’t unless you acknowledge it and you take it off … And that’s where it’s like, okay, I’m going to take this off even though it looks nice for a second.”

Photo Credit: Grilled Cheese Grant

Milwaukee artist Joe Acri is a MIAD grad, like many Grilled Cheese Grant recipients. He’s been organizing with the group since 2018, two years after its first sizzle.

“When it started, it was out of a frustration from the founding members that their art school didn’t provide adequate funding for senior projects. And it just didn’t have resources for the fine arts students,” he says.

The grant has partially funded 10 projects—and fully funded 14—plus collaborated with half a dozen galleries to support 30-plus artists in their 14-county region.

“We are responding to a very real need, and that response is being felt, and it’s appreciated,” Acri says.

Community-funded models can work across the Midwest and affect real change, he says.

“I think that it has the ability to transform the way that artists are thinking about the work and the type of work that they’re able to make, and who they’re able to reach.”

The post Grilled Cheese Grant: Buy a Sandwich, Help an Artist appeared first on Arts Midwest.