The Minneapolis Convention Center (MCC) and Arts, Culture and Creative Economy Program of the City of Minneapolis, and Meet Minneapolis, in collaboration with Northern Lights.mn and the Northern Spark festival, are pleased to announce the second annual Creative City Challenge, a competition for Minnesota artists and architects to create a destination artwork. which acts as a sociable and participatory platform for summer-long onsite activities.
#ccc, 2014
This year, the winner of the Creative City Challenge is Balancing Ground by the team of Christopher Field, Amanda Lovelee, Kyle Waites, and Sarah West.
Balancing Ground at Northern Spark from Northern Spark.
Overview
Balancing Ground is a welcoming interactive space that can be activated by 1 or 100 people. It is continually transforming. with complex shadow patterns woven throughout the space. Balancing Ground presents a space for playful participation and quiet. reflective moments. It is a space without walls-open to all-built on a foundation of community voices. If you are willing to listen. Balancing Ground will literally speak to you. Learn more at balancingground.com
Artist Team
Amanda Lovelee (Public Engagement. Project Lead)
Christopher Field (Sound & Technology Design)
Kyle Waites (Lighting Design. Construction Lead)
Sarah West (Sculpture Design. Concept Renderings/Imagery)
Collaborators
James Lamis (Lead Fabricator). James Karla. Josh Ritenour and Dan Bustos (Fabricators). Jonathan Wacker. PE (Structural Engineer. Senior Associate- HGA Architects). Aaron Dysart (Seesaw/Bench Designer/Fabricator). Matt Quesada (Embedded Systems Engineer).
Northern Spark
Balancing Ground was launched at Northern Spark on June 13.
Creative City Challenge Days
As part of the Creative City Challenge’s summer-long programming, there are three themed activity days: Play Day, July 19; Discovery Day, August 16; and Maker Day, September 13.
Minneapolis Convention Center
The Minneapolis Convention Center (MCC) is the largest indoor, contiguous, convention center in the Upper Midwest with over 1.5 million visitors annually, including 250,000 during the summer months. The MCC is more than a meeting place. It’s more than a show space. It’s a building all about building something else…relationships. A blend of form and function, the MCC provides aesthetically pleasing and innovative solutions for a variety of conferences, trade shows and events. With nearly 480,000 square feet of trade show space, 87 column-free conference meeting rooms, a 28,000-square-foot ballroom, and an auditorium with superb production and flexible technology options, the facility can handle any event from a small meeting to a large convention or trade show.
The Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy Program, City of Minneapolis
The Arts, Culture and Creative Economy program is an initiative of the City Coordinator’s office established August 2011 to leverage the creative sector towards strengthening social and economic growth in the City of Minneapolis. The goals of the program are to: promote and coordinate City resources to develop the arts as an economic generator in alignment the City Goal “art and artists are economic drivers in and of themselves,” to stimulate cross-sector collaboration to strengthen the arts economy and community in Minneapolis and provide presence and visibility for the creative sector in the City of Minneapolis.
Northern Lights.mn
Northern Lights.mn is a nonprofit arts organization dedicated to artists working innovatively in the public sphere, exploring expanded possibilities for civic engagement and encourage pluralistic community. They produce Northern Spark and Creative City Challenge plaza events.
Meet Minneapolis
Meet Minneapolis is a private, not-for-profit, member-based association. It actively promotes and sells the Minneapolis area as a destination for conventions and meetings, works to maximize the visitor experience and markets the city as a desirable tourist destination to maximize the economic benefit of the greater Minneapolis area.
Meet Minneapolis is accredited by the Destination Marketing Accreditation Program (DMAP) of the Destination Marketing Association International.