The Minnesota State Arts Board is pleased to announce that the Artist Registry is now open at www.percentforart.us. The registry is a collection of resumes and work samples of visual artists in all disciplines who would like to be considered for public art commissions and purchases. There is no fee to join. Call Nicole Sinoneaux, program director at 651-215-1617 for further information.

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Bush Artist Fellowships: Artist Fellowship Program

Bush Artist Fellowships provide artists with significant financial support that enables them to further their work and their contribution to their communities. Artists may use a Bush Artist Fellowship in many ways—to explore new directions, continue work already in progress, or accomplish work not financially feasible otherwise. Fellows may decide to take time for solitary work or reflection, engage in collaborative or community projects, embark on travel or research, or pursue any other activity that contributes to their lives as artists. The Fellowship is open to artists who work in a variety of media and disciplines, including: visual arts, choreography, multimedia, performance art, storytelling, traditional and folk arts, script works, film and video, literature and music composition.

Bush Foundation
332 Minnesota Street, Suite E900, St. Paul, MN 55101
Main: 651-227-0891, Fax: 651-297-6485, Toll Free: 800-605-7315
www.bushfoundation.org

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Thriving Arts: Thriving Small Communities

The report, Thriving Arts: Thriving Small Communities, by Sharon Rodning Bash, MRAC’s Director of Management Training and Services, shares the findings of a year-long study funded by the Bush Foundation that sought to discover whether there were critical ingredients or common themes necessary to build long-term viability for the arts in rural and exurban communities. The report can be downloaded from the MRAC website http://mrac.org/resources/index.html

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“Artists Count” Finds Minnesota’s Artists Have $205 Million in Annual Economic Impact

A new study released by Minnesota Citizens for the Arts reveals artists in Minnesota have a $205.2 million dollar annual impact on Minnesota’s economy, supporting nearly 6,000 full-time jobs and delivering $24 million in state and local government revenue. However, the study also found that artists are twice as likely as other Minnesotans to go without health insurance. The health insurance figures were part of the “Artist Quality of Life” section of Artists Count, which also looked at the percentage of artists covered by retirement plans and frequency of volunteerism and voting.

“Artist Count: The Economic Impact of Minnesota’s Individual Artists" identified nearly 20,000 artists living in every corner of Minnesota, including full-time, part-time, and retired/hobbyist artists,” said Sheila Smith, Executive Director of Minnesota Citizens for the Arts. “We believe this is a conservative estimate of the number of artists in our state. Artists are a contributing factor to the economies and communities of every region of Minnesota, but we were dismayed by the high rate of the uninsured.”

The study, primarily funded by The McKnight Foundation, was conducted by Minnesota Citizens for the Arts, Springboard for the Arts, and the Minnesota Craft Council in 2006. Fifty Minnesota arts organizations partnered in the data collection, which asked artists to report their spending, income and other data from 2005.

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