Witnessed by 3 people, Jayanthi Rasa, a Black woman stands on a city sidewalk near a large, multi-colored painting, singing with her eyes closed.

Projects

Current

Past

  • Lacey Prpić Hedtke, Diver Van Avery and Miré Regulus stand spread out across a front lawn holding lawn signs that say “this house had a racial covenant” and “we are building racial equity one deed at a time”
  • Part of a vibrant, multi-colored picture of two Black women with an image of a house overlayed with Afro centric patterns, a partial image of city tracts and a grassy area covered in Afrocentric patterns
  • Together, a poppie and his daughter place a lawn sign in their front yard
  • In shades of blue, black and white a partial image of a broadside of a poem, on the left a Black woman in a head wrap with closed eyes and bowed head, on the right some partial stanzas of the poem
  • Through a stand of purple and yellow St John’s wort flowers, a lawn sign that says “this house had a racial covenant” with an abstracted image of a yellow house outlined in red
  • Outside the marquee of the Parkway Theater, five artists and cultural workers wearing fall jackets and sweatshirts stand in a row smiling into the camera.
  • On a stage backlit in blue, Autumn Brown sings into a microphone, hand upraised, eyes focused out on the audience.

Free the Deeds

Co-created with Lacey Prpić Hedtke in 2021, Free the Deeds is a city-wide project illuminating the history, locations, and impact of racial covenants across Minneapolis. It presents opportunities to build community connection and understanding, to shift racial inequities in housing access and ownership, and to offer a beginning path to reparation and repair. In 2022 it continues as a project of Longfellow Community Council.

Engage with Free the Deeds

  • A mixed group of people of different ages and cultural backgrounds sit in a circle on the ground, smiling and animatedly talking
  • Three people sit on a white and red blanket on the grass listening, someone in front of them is also sitting on the grass holding up a poem
  • Several people of mixed cultural backgrounds are sitting on the grass and on blankets, one person wearing a backwards baseball cap and a black tank top sits facing the group reading a poem to them

Poetry and Pie

This event is the essence of ease, pleasure, and engagement with new poetry while celebrating the beauty of summer solstice in Powderhorn Park.

We celebrate the words of both established and new Twin Cities poets and devour pies of all kinds made by neighbors and community members.

Our foundational project since 2013, Poetry & Pie breaks open the heart of our community and welcomes us into recognition of how we belong together.

Video: Xiaolu Wang

  • Photos of the four artists from Walk Towards It: Miré Regulus, Ellen Marie Hinchcliffe, Ed Bok Lee and Sharon Bridgforth

Photos by Diver Van Avery, expect Sharon Bridgforth, taken by
Nia Witherspoon.

Walk Towards It

We have partnered with Spark & Stitch Institute to create a 4-week online course Walk Towards It – Poetry and Prompts to Spark Introspection for Parents. Anchored by insights from nationally celebrated, award-winning playwright and parent, Sharon Bridgforth, Walk Towards It features original writing and reflections from three Minneapolis-based poet parents: Ed Bok Lee, Ellen Hinchcliffe, and Miré Regulus.

Check out Walk Towards It

  • Outside. In foreground an image of horseshoe and bees on a yellow background, three smiling people stand in the background smiling.
  • A gathering of people stand in a yard behind an artisticly interpreted realty sign showing blue sky, a waterfall and a yellow circle encrested by crossed arrows
  • A person in the background to the left of an image of part of a a poem in a front yard.
  • Two smiling female identified people lean in on either side of a print of a poem broadside displayed on a gallery wall
  • Artist Witt Siasoco smiles, standing next to an artistically interpreted orange and blue realty sign with roses flowering from the bed of a toy truck
  • R. Vincent Moniz Jr. reads his poem from a purple and white porch witnessed by a small child in a red shirt, in the foreground is an artistically interpreted white and green poem broadside

This House is Not For Sale

2015

This project used the realty sign as both symbol for project themes and as structure for displaying art. It brought poets and lead visual artist Witt Siasoco together with Minneapolis homeowners who purchased a foreclosed home, and staff from the City of Lakes Community Land Trust to reflect on what it means to acknowledge a home’s history and make a life in the wake of someone else’s loss. From those conversations, a poet would collaborate with Witt on a site-specific artwork for the front yard of each home that was part of the project. Homeowners publicly shared the installation of their realty sign with music, food, and other celebrations as a way to invite others to consider their home’s history and to express gratitude for “home”. Conceived by Diver and Witt, the project received the Americans for the Arts - National Recognition to the Best in Public Art Projects in 2016.

Participating poets:
Venessa Fuentes
Tish Jones
Vincent Moniz Jr.
Sun Yung Shin
Moheb Soliman
J. Otis Powell
Diver Van Avery

  • Picture poem on birch bark hanging from a tree in a park with grass and other trees in the background
  • Sequioa Hauck, a Native gender non-conforming person with long braids holding two painted canoe paddles one with Dakóta Makóče written on it and the other covered by the text of a poem

Starting Point Project

2019

This project invited the Powderhorn neighborhood to engage with poetry in unexpected ways. Working with poets, one of whose ancestors came from each of the seven continents, we invited them each to write a poem inspired by listening to their ancestors and to place their poetry in surprising places throughout the neighborhood. In a joyous overlap, we invited those poets to share their poems at Poetry & Pie that summer.