Through our Pathway Schools Initiative, McKnight partners with seven schools in the Twin Cities — as well as the University of Chicago’s Urban Education Institute — to align and improve the quality of literacy instruction from PreK-3rd grade. Dual Language Learners (DLLs) make up nearly two-thirds of the student population in our Pathway Schools — across Minneapolis …
Following a national search, the McKnight Foundation has named Nichol Higdon as its new vice president of finance and operations. Higdon comes to McKnight after 12 years in senior executive leadership roles serving YMCAs, specializing in human resources, operations, fundraising, and board and community engagement. She joins the Foundation at a time of transformation as …
When we set out on our State of the Artist Documentary Project, working with some of the McKnight Artist Fellows of the past 30 years, we immediately saw a chance to satisfy our own curiosity about Bill Cottman and his family. We’d met Bill, his wife Beverly, and their daughter Kenna last year when they …
People intrigued by Minnesota’s surplus of artist-centered creative placemaking activities often ask me, “What’s in the water in Minnesota?” And with good reason: A flurry of discussion (in articles, blog posts, opinion pieces, and at conferences) and bricks-and-mortar development (in the streets, neighborhoods, and lives of actual Minnesotans), all spinning out from the central concept …
Perpetual Inspiration Machine from Works Progress on Vimeo. What happens when creating work for a gallery audience isn’t enough? During our visit to visual artist Carolyn Swiszcz’s home studio in West Saint Paul, she shared a book of sketches she’d done back in grade school. From the time she was a kid, Carolyn was making things, whether …
This post originally appeared at The Edge, an online magazine from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Policy Development and Research. Recently, the McKnight Foundation has been giving more consideration to what market orientation and scalability mean for our programs, policies, and grantmaking approach. In part this is an adaptive response to the …
https://vimeo.com/48815490 Bog Walk from Works Progress on Vimeo. Artist Christine Baeumler wants us to get our feet wet. When we approached her about creating a short video for McKnight’s State of the Artist project about her and her recent work, she suggested we take a walk together. On one of the hottest days of the …
Last week in Minneapolis, hundreds of people gathered at the Economic Club of Minnesota, which provides a non-partisan platform for business, government, and public policy leaders to present ideas on how Minnesota can better compete in the global economy. The packed house came together for the national release of Heat in the Heartland: Climate Change & Economic Risk in the Midwest, a new …
https://vimeo.com/55518751 Skewing the Lens from Works Progress on Vimeo. "It’s hard sometimes to think outside your own very complicated, very personal, very busy, life-is-overwhelming lens, but when you go to the theater, what I want is... that moment where all of the sudden your world explodes from that lens into this huge connection to the …
“We believe artists play a key role in rewriting the rural narrative,” says Michele Anderson, rural program director for Springboard for the Arts, a longtime grantee of The McKnight Foundation. Anderson is an organizer, and as a composer, creative writer, and pianist, an accomplished artist herself. “We have learned over and over again that rural towns are …