IA Receives MRAC Capital Grant

We are excited to announce that we have been awarded a Capital Grant for $9,980 from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council! These funds will be used to purchase two cameras, lenses, two laptops, software and related accessories for our new Video Story-telling Collaborative.

By far the greatest opportunity that has emerged for us so far is the need to expand the video production capability of our programming with broadcast quality video and editing equipment. Clearly, video and film are the story-telling mediums of our culture and have an extremely broad appeal and reach far beyond the students’ own community and context, providing them a larger “canvas” on which to create. They allow for a variety of formats and styles, allow many students to participate and develop collaborative skills, and also allow us to combine multiple artistic disciplines. In video story-telling projects, video, photography, editing, graphic design and visual art, music, theater and dance can all be brought together and students can create something artistically stronger as a team than they often can on their own. This also allows us to push beyond classroom learning to a more hands-on, experiential, project-based learning focused on the collaborative goal of creating a significant artistic product that potentially has broad “market” interest. If students know the potential impact and outcome their video project could have, they will pour even more of themselves into these projects. We want to put the best creative tools and opportunities that we can into their hands because we believe that they have the potential to create something amazing!

“This activity is funded, in part, by an appropriation from the Minnesota State Legislature with money from the State’s general fund.”