Northern Lights.mn takes art to the streets.

Northern Spark is one of our best known programs. It is a multidisciplinary Minnesota festival–a free, dusk to dawn participatory public art event throughout Minneapolis* from the Greenway to the Mississippi. In 2012, 40,000 people experienced 118 works by over 200 artists in more than 28 venues in collaboration with 52 cultural partners.

In 2013, we’ll be returning to Saint Paul! Your contribution makes this metrowide community event possible.

Northern Lights.mn supports emerging artists.

Art(ists) On the Verge is an intensive, mentor-based fellowship program for 5 Minnesota-based, emerging artists or artist groups working experimentally at the intersection of art, technology, and digital culture with a focus on network-based practices that are interactive and/or participatory. Now in its fourth year, AOV is generously supported by the Jerome Foundation.

Northern Lights.mn supports artists who rock our world.

Northern Lights has commissioned, co-commissioned and co-presented many extraordinary artists, including Futurefarmers, Mona El-Khafif, Sharon Hayes, ligorano + reese, Wing Young Huie, David Goldes, Monica Haller, Andrea Stanislav, Jim Campbell, Chris Larson, Mark Shepard, Marisa Jahn, Shih Chieh Huang, Zach Lieberman, Angelo Vermeulen, The Living, SOFTlab, Daily Tous Les Jours, Piotr Szyhalski, and many others. If you have experienced the Giant Sing Along at the Minnesota State Fair, you have seen Northern Lights.mn at work.

Northern Lights.mn supports new ideas.

This spring, Northern Lights presented in collaboration with the Walker Art Center, our 2nd biannual symposium: Discourse and Discord: Architecture of Agonism from the Kitchen Table to the City Street. “In an era of cultural conservatives and the liberal elite, Occupiers and Tea Partiers, civil uprisings and government crackdowns, perhaps the one point of agreement today is there’s no shortage of disagreement. But if that’s true, then why isn’t there more debate—not online flame wars, not the televised jockeying of political candidates, but live, in-person dialogue?”

Northern Lights.mn supports collaboration.

The very first Northern Lights initiated and produced was the UnConvention, a multi-partner, multi-venue program about the intersection of participatory politics and participatory media during the 2008 Republication National Convention. We have worked with dozens of organizations locally and nationally. Our goal is the best way to support innovative artists, spark important ideas, and build supportive audiences. As often as not this is best done in collaboration.

We are dedicated to the least amount of infrastructure that is necessary to support the most innovative artists with the greatest impact. This means more bang for your buck.

Your support makes Northern Lights.mn possible.

Thank you.

Steve Dietz
President and Artistic Director

For a $50 donation, receive a free ticket to David Byrne's "Playing" the Piano at Aria, in collaboration with First & First.