Vsa Minnesota

Filing Period

Oct 1, 2012 to Sep 30, 2013

Signed

Feb 4, 2014

Return Version

2012v2.1

Gross Receipts

$573,678

Mission

Major Activities

Activity 2

Professional development:vsa minnesota conducted three workshops that addressed topics crucial to successfully using the arts with students with disabilities. The workshops brought together both residency artists and others seeking to improve their skills in working with students with disabilities in and through the arts. Three of these workshops were held this year and all took place at the perpich center for arts education in golden valley. The professional development program area also includes facilitation and promotion of networking and technical assistance to artists with disabilities. This occurs through artist gatherings in two greater minnesota locations and one twin cities location and through an email posting service that lists current information pertinent to minnesota artists with disabilities, including employment opportunities, calls for art, accessible performance listings, and announcements of happenings by and for artists with disabilities. Finally, this program also includes the emerging artists grant program which recognizes minnesota artists with disabilities who have identified a project to move their careers forward. Seven $1,500 grants were awarded this year to writers, performing and visual artists.

Activity 3

Cultural access and inclusive arts services:vsa minnesota serves as a resource to state arts organizations on disability awareness, the americans with disability act, and physical and programmatic access to arts venues and services, using on-site materials and community resources. The program again this year included the ada improvement grant program for metro arts organizations made possible by a grant from the metropolitan regional arts council (st. Paul). This program allowed vsa minnesota to make grants to 15 organizations seeking to improve access to their programs by people with disabilities through physical or program improvements. The maximum grant amount was $15,000 and just over $195,000 was awarded in total. In addition, a similar grant program was initiated this year to serve organizations in the lakes region, an area including the nine counties of becker, clay, douglas, grant, otter tail, pope, stevens, traverse and wilkin. In this first year of granting, a total of $8,000 was awarded to three organizations.this program/service area also continues to include access to performing arts which is a long-standing program that provides technical assistance to arts organizations in the areas of american sign language interpretation, audio description and captioning for individuals who are deaf or blind who attend arts performances offering these accommodations. Technical assistance includes marketing to deaf/hard of hearing and blind/low vision communities and building performance organizations capabilities to meet the needs of audience members from these communities. Vsa minnesota has a captioning display unit that it offers out to organizations wishing to provide open captioning for their live arts performances. The unit was used eight times in the past year by five different organizations.

Filer

EIN

36-3440452