Festival Partners

Springboard for the Arts

Springboard for the Arts is an economic and community development organization for artists and by artists. From our offices in Fergus Falls and Saint Paul, MN, Springboard provides programs that help artists make a living and a life, and programs that help communities connect to the creative power of artists. Springboard for the Arts’ mission is to cultivate vibrant communities by connecting artists with the skills, information, and services they need to make a living and a life.

Ketzal Coatlicue

Ketzal Coatlicue (Precious mother earth) is a Kalpulli (learning community) of Indigenous people joined by the desire to learn, share and live in the Mexican Aztec dance tradition. Ketzal Coatlicue pursues this spiritual, mental, and physical vocation with music from the sacred drum, conch shells, seeds and other instruments gifted by the natural environment. The group consists of multi-age dancers with varying years of experience. They are located in South Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Saint Paul Almanac

The Saint Paul Almanac is a people’s meeting space for sharing the stories of our community through our annual book, public readings, and a unique community editor mentorship program. Our leadership, employees, participants, and contractors (editors, artists, filmmakers, etc.) reflect a multiplicity of ethnicities, which is a guiding principle put into daily action for engagement in the arts in Saint Paul. Saint Paul Almanac exists to center the people of our community into the heart of storytelling, story sharing, and all other literary activities.

Penumbra Theatre

Penumbra Theatre creates professional productions that are artistically excellent, thought-provoking, and relevant and illuminates the human condition through the prism of the African American experience.Penumbra’s goals are: To increase public awareness of the significant contributions of African Americans in creating a diversified American theatrical tradition; To encourage and facilitate a culturally diverse and all-inclusive America by using theatre to teach, criticize, comment and model; To use theatre to create an American mythology that includes African Americans and other peoples of color in every thread of the fabric of our society; To continue to maintain and stabilize a black performing arts community.

Rondo Community Library

The Saint Paul Public Library is the cornerstone of our thriving city. We welcome people of all ages and cultures, strengthen neighborhoods and communities, and connect all to a world of knowledge.

Minnesota Chippewa Tribe Building

Ordway Center for the Performing Arts

The Ordway, recognized as one of the U.S.’s leading not-for-profit performing arts centers, is home to a wide variety of performances throughout the year that encompass the finest in American musical theater, world music, dance, and vocal artists in its Music Theater and Concert Hall. In addition, each year the Ordway presents its Flint Hills Family Festival and serves over 50,000 children and adults through its Ordway Education programs.

Traveling Museum

The Traveling Museum functions as a mobile project space for public art. Pop up gallery exhibitions, didactic art activities, happenings, individual artist projects, and mobile art residencies are all feasible within the Museum’s efficient fish house inspired architecture. We bring contemporary art places it never gets to go.

Victoria Theater Arts Center

We envision a vibrant neighborhood where the arts welcome, heal, transform and build power for the people of Frogtown and Rondo. The vision for the future of the Victoria Theater Arts Center is captured through authentic community engagement.

Frogtown Radio

WFNU-LP Frogtown Community Radio is a volunteer-run station operating at 94.1FM in Saint Paul and streaming online worldwide. We operate 24-7, 365 with talk and music shows of all varieties. We offer free radio and broadcast training to our community members and welcome new programmers of all ages and experience.

The 100% Campaign

The 100% Campaign is bringing Minnesotans together – people just like you – who believe we need an equitable clean energy future for everyone in our state.

With both organizational partners and individual endorsees, the 100% Campaign is grounded in the idea that “to change everything, we need everyone”. We are organizing a cross-sector, statewide, multi-racial, intersectional campaign to build an equitable clean energy economy that works for everyone in Minnesota.

We believe that Minnesotans must act now to ensure our well-being for generations to come.

Saint Paul Neighborhood Network (SPNN)

SPNN is a community media and technology center that provides the tools and training for youth, adult, and nonprofits to use media and technology to tell stories and gain job skills. We have 35 AmeriCorps members in nonprofits, libraries, and workforce centers around the Twin Cities metro area. We partner with organizations to create studio programs. Through our programs and classes we help youth and adults learn media making skills. There are many ways you can be involved with SPNN, find the way that is right for you!

Capitol Region Watershed District (CRWD)

Capitol Region Watershed District (CRWD) is a special purpose local government unit dedicated to protecting, managing and improving the water resources of the District, which includes parts of Falcon Heights, Lauderdale, Maplewood, Roseville and Saint Paul, Minnesota. All of the District’s lakes, including Como Lake, Crosby and Little Crosby Lakes, Loeb Lake and Lake McCarrons, eventually flow into the Mississippi River.

CRWD works across geographic and political boundaries to protect the health of the District’s wetlands, lakes, streams and river. Through research, planning and action, CRWD helps present and solve water-related problems within the 40 square-mile District.

All My Relations Arts

All My Relations Arts honors and strengthens relationships between contemporary American Indian artists and the living influence of preceding generations, between artists and audiences of all ethnic backgrounds, and between art and the vitality of the American Indian Cultural Corridor.

American Indian Cultural Corridor

The American Indian Cultural Corridor’s name and conceptual identity is the work of the Minneapolis-based Native American Community Development Institute. The goal is to re-brand the traditional heart of the city’s Native American community as a place where both Indians and tourists can enjoy Native American food, art, and culture on Franklin Avenue and in the Phillips Neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Aurora St. Anthony Neighborhood Development Corporation

(ASANDC) is based in St. Paul’s historic Rondo neighborhood, and with Neighborhood Development Corporation launched the Rondo Arts Cultural Business District in 2013. Today ASANDC hosts a variety of social, economic, housing, and commercial development programs for Aurora St. Anthony, Frogtown and Summit-University residents of all ages, with a mission to foster positive relationships within and between the neighborhoods we serve and to support our members in affecting the quality of life in their communities.

The Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy program of the City of Minneapolis

The City of Minneapolis Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy program’s mission is to leverage the creative sector towards social and economic growth in the city of Minneapolis.

Foci Minnesota Center for Glass Art

Foci MCGA is a nonprofit glass studio. We provide space for artists, educators and the public to gather, learn and practice the ancient art of shaping molten glass. The gallery and studio are free to visit and open to the public Monday – Sunday, from 10 am to 9 pm.

Franklin Library

The Night Library is a project of Hennepin County Library (HCL), who is excited to be presenting in the Northern Spark festival for a fifth consecutive year. This year the creative process has been a unique opportunity to collaborate with local Native artists to “Indigenize” the Franklin Library. Through a mix of modern and traditional storytelling, projection, puppetry and live performance, HCL hopes the audience can learn about and from our Native community.

Hallie Q. Brown Community Center

The mission of Hallie Q. Brown Community Center, Inc is to improve the quality of life in our community by providing access to critical human services, fostering and promoting personal growth, and developing community leadership.

With a primary focus in the Summit-University area, Hallie Q. Brown Community Center successfully operates a wide variety of programs, which specifically address the critical needs of community residents.

Hennepin County Library

Hennepin County Library’s mission is to nourish minds, transform lives and build community together. We envision a Hennepin County where library services ensure every person has the opportunity and resources to read, graduate, engage, work and learn.

Hmong Museum

Hmong Museum is the first and currently only museum dedicated to the preservation and education of Hmong culture, history, experiences, and arts. We do this through the creation and collaboration of programs that document Hmong history & knowledge, exhibit Hmong culture & art, and share Hmong experiences & stories.

Minneapolis Institute of Art

Inspiring wonder through the power of art. The Minneapolis Institute of Art enriches the community by collecting, preserving, and making accessible outstanding works of art from the world’s diverse cultures.

Minnesota Museum of American Art

The Minnesota Museum of American Art (the M) is one of the oldest visual arts organizations in Minnesota, with roots stretching back to the 19th century. Today, the M holds more than 4,500 artworks that showcase the unique voice of American artists, guided by the belief that art should reflect the constantly shifting landscape that defines the American experience.

Metropolitan Regional Arts Council

Minnesota Sacred Harp Singers

The Minnesota State Sacred Harp Singing Convention meets regularly to sing from The Sacred Harp and other American shaped-note tunebooks. We’re a singing community, not a performance group. We have all-day singings (“conventions”) in February, July and September, and two-hour singings at least once a week. Our schedule is at http://mnfasola.org/.

Model Cities

Model Cities is a private nonprofit organization created in 1967 to service residents of St. Paul’s Rondo/Frogtown community. Our mission is to “promote social and economic prosperity by providing access to opportunities that develop and stabilize families and communities.

Native American Community Development Institute (NACDI)

The Native American Community Development Institute acts as a catalyst to help Native people create the future they envision. Our work is founded on the belief that all American Indian people have a place, purpose, and a future strengthened by sustainable community development.

NACDI initiates projects that benefit the Native community, often in partnership with other Indigenous-led organizations.

Northern Lights.mn

Northern Lights.mn is a roving, collaborative, interactive media-oriented arts agency from the Twin Cities for the world. It presents innovative art in the public sphere, both physical and virtual, focusing on artists creatively using technology, both old and new, to engender new relations between audience and artwork and more broadly between citizenry and their built environment.

Saint Paul Public Library

The Saint Paul Public Library is the cornerstone of our thriving city. We welcome people of all ages and cultures, strengthen neighborhoods and communities, and connect all to a world of knowledge.

The Commons

The Commons is a 4.2 acre public green space in downtown Minneapolis. The park is bounded by 4th and 5th Streets and Park Avenue and 5th Avenue.

Walker Art Center

The Walker Art Center is a catalyst for the creative expression of artists and the active engagement of audiences. Focusing on the visual, performing, and media arts of our time, the Walker takes a global, multidisciplinary, and diverse approach to the creation, presentation, interpretation, collection, and preservation of art. Walker programs examine the questions that shape and inspire us as individuals, cultures, and communities.

Weavers Guild of Minnesota

The Weavers Guild of Minnesota’s mission is to preserve and advance the arts of weaving, spinning, and dyeing.