The Great Northern

The Great Northern is excited to announce our inaugural Great Northern Festival Producer Incubator program! This program supports the development of community-driven?festivals?that celebrate and enrich the Twin Cities’ vibrant arts and culture scene. Six participating organizations including Semilla Center for Healing and the Arts,?Somali Museum, Midtown Global Market, The Legacy Building, Hook and Ladder Theatre &?Firehouse Performing Arts Center, and the DuNord Foundation will receive funding, individual mentorship, and access to a comprehensive curriculum covering fundraising, staffing, programming, production, marketing, and community engagement. This five-month intensive program is designed to equip individuals with the skills, resources, and mentorship needed to produce high-quality festivals. We are so excited to be working with these wonderful organizations and to strengthen our own commitment to our community and the arts. Our participating organizations have an amazing line-up of festivals happening this spring and summer, and we highly encourage you to check out the calendar of these events in the link in our comments. The Great Northern?Festival?Incubator?Program is made possible by funding from DEED and the City of Minneapolis. Lake Street Lift projects were made possible by funding from DEED and the City of Minneapolis. https://lnkd.in/ghsBU7AM

We were so lucky to welcome Ariane Laxo, Director of Sustainability at HGA, to The Great Northern's Climate Solutions Series this winter to discuss the impact of climate change on our communities. You can listen to this panel in its entirety by visiting our Climate Action Guide, linked in the comments.

The Climate Solutions Series Action Guide is here! Through action-based conversations and workshops, we came together this January as a community to discuss what climate change means for us in Minnesota and the Midwest. The Climate Solutions Series Action Guide keeps these conversations going while providing clear, relevant actions to take on each topic. This guide includes: ? Video and / or audio recordings of each Climate Solutions Series session ? Resource lists for each topic ? Specific action steps for each topic ? A climate action reading list curated in partnership with Magers & Quinn During the Climate Solutions Series, speaker Britt Wray, PhD offered The Great Northern audience advice on how to take meaningful action on the climate as individuals who might feel overwhelmed by systemic barriers, stating that hope for the future is "a mindset that you believe the future can be better than it is today based on the actions that you take." You can listen to that entire conversation by checking out the Climate Action Guide, as well as all other Climate Solutions Series sessions. We are grateful to the writers, journalists, activists, and climate leaders featured at The Great Northern’s Climate Solutions Series who helped us build out this action guide. Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/gsxRYVT9

In January, The Great Northern sat down with Waxwing Consulting founder Sachiko Graber to talk about climate resiliency and building community in Minnesota and our region. Sachiko was a featured speaker at The Great Northern’s Climate Solutions Series session "Emerging Climate Careers". Missed Climate Solutions Series this year? We're excited to announce that we will soon be releasing a Climate Solutions Series Action Guide, which includes audio and/or video recordings of each session, in addition to further resources and action steps on a wide variate of climate topics. The CSS Action guide will be released Wednesday, March 5. Make sure to sign up for our newsletter to get the guide delivered straight to your inbox.

A huge and heartfelt thank you for joining us at The Great Northern to celebrate our community, our winter, and the magic of the season. Special thanks to our partners, staff, volunteers, and audience members. It takes a team to make our festival happen, and it wouldn’t happen without you! The festival may be over, but the work continues. From ongoing art installations and a forthcoming climate action guide to exciting partner events, we’ll be out and about in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, creating community, inspiring action, and sharing the resilient spirit of the North with the world. To better understand the experience of festival attendees, we are asking you to complete a short, anonymous survey to tell us more about your experience. Your feedback is essential in helping us improve and shape future festivals to be even better.? https://lnkd.in/g4a5deHC

It's a hard time to work in equity or decarbonization, but the work is more important now than ever. It was a pleasure to speak about Equitable Decarbonization of Buildings last weekend with Aimee Witteman and Shubha Harris at The Great Northern Festival as part of their Climate Solutions series (shout out to Lillie Benowitz for curating a fantastic line up and encouraging us to foster hope and action). Such a pleasure to connect with these smart and engaged women. I came away from the event recharged and recommitted to work on equitable decarbonization of buildings in the ways and scale we can in this moment. And to organize and advocate for the future as well. Onward!

We're so glad to have the opportunity to uplift and highlight all of the climate work happening in our state and our region. In his opening remarks on the push for environmental protections, Governor Walz shared the following quote from Angela Duckworth: "Enthusiasm is common, endurance is rare". Part of the work of The Climate Solutions Series is to celebrate that spirit of endurance by reminding us all just how much is being done in our neighborhoods, towns, cities, and states to build toward a more sustainable future. Thank you to our audience for turning out, and for our wonderful event producers for creating such an important event.

“Just do the work.” Governor Tim Walz passionately encouraging and supporting advocates at The Great Northern Climate Solutions Series event this morning.

“I feel like the sense of wanting to create something beautiful for the community and for myself and for all the people that are involved just kind of took over,” Rieger said. “To be asked to be part of the Great Northern festival, I definitely feel like I’m being accepted and it feels really great to just be asked to present my artwork for the Twin Cities.” We hope to see you at the opening for HOTTEA's (Eric Reigers) art opening on Lake Street tonight. We'll be celebrating with a DJ, fire pits, a complimentary hot tea bar, food truck, and more! Read more about the art installation here: https://lnkd.in/gMmnJcvT RSVP at the link in the comments. We are grateful to our partners Lake Street Lift. This Cultural Districts Art Fund program activity is funded, in part, by the Arts & Cultural Affairs Department in the City of Minneapolis.

"As a longtime skeptic of winter, the Great Northern Festival helped soften me towards the cold, dark season." We were touched by this generous, deeply thought piece on The Great Northern festival, recently published in AzureRoad. Now more than ever, we are dedicated to uplifting our region and bringing our community together to celebrate everything that makes it special. A fundamental part of that work is addressing and responding to the climate crisis that is impacting us locally, regionally, and nationally. As we take a deep breath before the launch of our 2025 festival (tomorrow!), we want to take a moment to recognize the tireless work of our staff members, volunteers, board members, and partners who make The Great Northern such a special event. This winter and every winter, we are inviting you out into the cold. Gather, connect, and be in community with us this January and February. We'll see you out there! Read the full piece here: https://lnkd.in/g-gFfk3J