Landscape:
An Education Program

Throughout 2019, we are curating an experience-based learning program in Minneapolis/St. Paul called Landscape. We will be exploring creativity through a variety of events situated within our natural landscape. Project support provided by the Visual Arts Fund, administered by Midway Contemporary Art with generous funding from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York.

We are partnering with local and international artists, designers, naturalists, and biologists to craft experiences for our community. The monthly programs will be free and open to the public. We have an events calendar with programming updates, and a reading list where we post articles, chapters and other forms of inspiration to accompany the programs.

Our 2019 programs are grounded in the following ideas:

1. Local Landscape
We have increasingly been asking questions about how our relationship to the natural world influences our creativity. We aim to expand creative practice through new ways of engaging with our local landscape, and in particular with plants. Our programming will be shaped in response to the changing seasons.

2. Place-Based Pedagogy
One of the fundamental goals of this program is to build community in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area and to foster a deeper connection to place through creative learning experiences. We recognize the history of place, and that we are working on Dakota and Ojibwe land.

3. Experiential and Sensorial Inquiry
The modes of inquiry for the program are embodied, experienced-based, and multi-sensory. We encourage everyone to get out of their offices, studios, and classrooms and into the world. In order to engage the senses, the workshops and events will primarily be outdoors, with the exception of the deep winter months when our extreme climate brings us indoors.

4. Creative Experimentation
Many of our programs will offer an opportunity for making. We want to encourage people to make things that may not be central to their practice and to push the boundaries of creative experimentation. We also have questions about whether spending time in nature can inspire new possibilities for creative practice.