Arts Midwest

Arts Midwest Amplifying Midwestern Creativity

Office hours with community elders? This South Dakota arts and culture organization is serving as a how-to. Rapid City’...
10/07/2026

Office hours with community elders?

This South Dakota arts and culture organization is serving as a how-to.

Rapid City’s Racing Magpie is a Lakota-centric nonprofit. It has artist studios, a gallery, community space and garden, and its newest addition: the Elder-in-Residence program.

“The whole point of being Lakota is that your elders inform who you are and they inform what the future generation is going to be like, essentially,” says program curator Rae Schad. “So in our eyes, our elders-in-residence program is a way for us to have elders in our building.”

In its pilot year, there’ve been sewing circles, history lessons, culinary classes, and art workshops. And the resident elders are paid for their time, knowledge, and stories.

“How do we really keep reinforcing that our Lakota elders are our cultural leaders? The way to do that is to treat them as such,” Schad says.

That respect ripples: The elders-in-residence, Dollie Red Elk and Marlyce Miner, serve as ambassadors and connectors for the nonprofit. Event participation has grown fivefold, Schad says, spanning generations, cultures, and backgrounds. Regulars now speak full Lakota sentences thanks to Red Elk’s conversation circles Mondays through Thursdays.

The elders-in-residence program runs through December, but Schad says the team is hoping to make it permanent.

How do you get a room full of people to engage more deeply and look out for each other? A lot of it starts with how your...
10/07/2026

How do you get a room full of people to engage more deeply and look out for each other? A lot of it starts with how your group agrees to show up together.

Community agreements are a tool for braver conversations, clearer expectations, and more consensual collaboration.

Join us for a free webinar on Wednesday, October 21 at 3pm CT to learn how you can set the stage for participants to feel seen and supported.

Facilitator Taja Will will cover ground from confidentiality to constitutions, talking about how to thread the needle between rules and compliance and staying flexible and responsive. You’ll get tips on how to listen for what a group needs and hear about the nuances of power and privilege for facilitators.

Register at https://artsmidwest.org/about/updates/community-agreements-webinar/.

Through the historic READI 2.0 grant program, a new wave of arts and community projects is amping up the Hoosier State. ...
10/06/2026

Through the historic READI 2.0 grant program, a new wave of arts and community projects is amping up the Hoosier State.

READI 2.0 is the second wave of the Regional Acceleration and Development Initiative (READI), Indiana’s historic $1.25 billion investment in its 15 identified regions through the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, in partnership with the Indiana Arts Commission.

With $250 million from the Lilly Endowment, READI 2.0 aims to strengthen quality of place efforts across the state. Over 25% of those dollars support arts and culture grants, recognizing the creative sector’s role in driving economic growth.

“A $65 million investment is a game changer for this sector, because we have a long history of being underinvested in, in the Midwest and nationally,” says Miah Michaelsen, Executive Director of the Indiana Arts Commission.

In southeast Indiana, the town of Dillsboro hopes to attract their next generation of artists. With its READI 2.0 grant, the Dillsboro Arts Friendship Gallery is launching paid, year-long artist residencies in brand-new studio spaces, starting this November.

“We want the town to adopt the artists,” says Thom Maltbie, co-founder of the gallery in the town of 1,360. “We want them to see that creative people can be a part of the community and contribute to whatever needs the community has.”

Creatives have long argued that the arts add tangible value: jobs, active communities, population retention, quality of life. This makes READI 2.0 more than a grant: It’s an act of validation and support from investors, economic developers, and the state.

10/05/2026

Think outside the box.

Adventures in Cardboard is helping kids do just that through creative outdoor play.

The camp is led by artists who encourage kids' imaginations to run wild.

It's more than "board" games. It's design, construction, and playful exploration of the natural world.

Videography by Ellie Hohulin

09/30/2026

You can earn a degree in musical instruments at this Midwest museum.

The National Music Museum is not in D.C. It's in Vermillion, South Dakota.

Located on the campus of The University of South Dakota, it's a center for musical instrument research and history.

The collection features instruments from around the world—many you can play, too!

There's something here for you—even if you hate the art.Nestled in residential Garfield Park, the Contemporary Art Museu...
09/29/2026

There's something here for you—even if you hate the art.

Nestled in residential Garfield Park, the Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis, or CAMi as its known, five-acre campus—including multiple galleries, a park, an amphitheater, and live, honest-to-goodness chickens—is dismantling preconceptions about contemporary art institutions.

Is it expensive? Is it accessible? Is it for me?

Admission is totally free. CAMi’s galleries, parking, paved walks, and green spaces are accessibly designed to welcome everyone, art lovers and skeptics alike. And it’s filled with commissions from artists—emerging and established—who understand the space. No didactics, just bold, boundary-pushing pieces . . . most of which can be touched.

This includes an experimental radio station, a bee sanctuary, a Tree of 40 Fruit, a “fake” office space where you can take part in interactive art (by playing?), and a chapel dedicated to chickens, among other art.

“I wanted this space to be somewhere people could come and like it or dislike it, and it’s okay,” says director and chief curator Shauta Marsh, “[where] they still felt like they could be, even if they hated the art.”

Love singing in the shower? Try a community choir. Choirs across the Midwest are giving voice to all sorts of communitie...
09/24/2026

Love singing in the shower? Try a community choir.

Choirs across the Midwest are giving voice to all sorts of communities.

In Wisconsin, Cheers, Madison is 230 singers strong. Choral newbies stand alongside music professors; college students clink glasses with those in their eighties.

It’s a testament to the choir, but also to the Midwest.

“I grew up in Illinois, but I don’t think I really understood how uniquely community-oriented people in Wisconsin are and also how much people value the arts here in Madison,” director Mary Brandenstein says. “I think that’s the charm of Madison is that people have such a strong desire to exist in community with others.”

09/23/2026

Buckle those helmets, artists: We’ve got an active, creative outlet for you—replete with an increased heartbeat, Midwestern charm, and community building.

Riverwest 24 (RW24) is an all-day neighborhood bike ride in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Think: a block party with live music, bikers in costume, and creative community building the whole day—and night, and day—long. There’s a RW24 tattoo every year (which counts as several laps), screen printing stations, dance-offs, and mini carnivals throughout.

People cheer for each other throughout, bikes creatively lit up against the Milwaukee skyline.

It's one of many ways bicycling and art ride in tandem across the Midwest.

Learn more at https://artsmidwest.org/stories/midwest-bicycling-placemaking-ragbrai-riverwest24/.

America's fastest-growing population is caregivers. In Michigan, their creativity matters. More than 60 million American...
09/22/2026

America's fastest-growing population is caregivers. In Michigan, their creativity matters.

More than 60 million Americans provide care for someone who needs it: an aging parent, a chronically ill spouse, a disabled child.

If you're not a caregiver, you know someone who is. But who is caring for the caregivers?

Enter the Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center's Art of Caregiving program. It provides a social and creative outlet to caregivers.

The sessions are flexible to accommodate unpredictable schedules—if you can’t make the morning, come to the evening one. Socializing is a vital component, forging friendships with people who “get it.” But the focus is on art—and developing creative skills that carry into their daily lives.

“A number of the staff here have been care partners. We know how important it is to be a care partner and also to have some kind of relief somewhere,” says Annie VanGelderen, President & CEO.

The creativity and connection shows caregivers that they, too, are cared for.

Everyone helps each other, however they can. And they do it creatively. That’s the mission of the Manoomin Arts Initiati...
09/17/2026

Everyone helps each other, however they can. And they do it creatively.

That’s the mission of the Manoomin Arts Initiative. The small collective grew from a partnership between the City of Mahnomen and White Earth Nation. That cooperation remains at its center.

“The biggest thing that we’re trying to do is collaborative, community work,” says Manoomin Arts executive director Joe Allen. “We really do just want to work together.”

What that looks like varies. Since 2021, Manoomin Arts has offered artist workshops, studio space, creative clubs, and pop-up sales.

There’s a coworking and classroom space, photographer and print studio, and gallery in the town of just over 1,000. It runs an arts incubator mentorship program and is starting a publication. And it’s even got an artist-majority board of directors to help organize and inform it all.

To Rebecca Dallinger, operations director, the answer lies in reciprocity: Art advocacy becomes collective mentoring, which develops community.

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