Articulture
Articulture is a nonprofit founded in 2000 to increase arts access in the local area.
Articulture offers arts experiences to people of all ages and abilities through onsite classes, partnerships with schools, social service and health organizations, consulting & facilitation, and public art projects.
Come to Articulture to learn new skills, find your muse, push your artistic skills further, or have your children engage in creative learning.
Involved with Redesign since 2008
What does Articulture do?
Articulture offers year-round onsite visual arts experiences for adults, teens, and children of all ages and abilities through classes, workshops, and summer camps as well as the opportunity to create public art with the Youth Arts Collaborative (YAC) of urban teens and teaching artists.
Articulture also offers short- and long-term partnerships with social service and health organizations to design Art & Healing programming for vulnerable client populations, and arts-based team building and creative problem solving for businesses.
What inspired you to start your nonprofit?
Executive director Elizabeth Greenbaum founded Articulture in 2000 in the Longfellow neighborhood through help from the Longfellow Community Council to fill the void in our local neighborhoods. She was inspired to do so when working at a suburban art center and finding students going there
from our Twin Cities river communities.
What has been the most rewarding part of doing what you do?
Community involvement such as creating Art & Healing partnership programming for vulnerable populations, or working with teens to create public art projects in local areas.
What has been the most challenging part of your work?
Finding funding to sustain our work through donations and grants is a never-ending process that often obstructs our capacity to fully focus on creating programs for our community.
“WE ARE ALWAYS LOOKING FOR OPPORTUNITIES TO TURN NEGLECTED AREAS INTO COMMUNITY ASSETS THROUGH MURALS, 3-D STRUCTURES, AND MORE.”
Why did you choose Seward to be the home of your business?
We quickly outgrew our original space. It took us four years to find a new home that was compatible with our classroom needs while having parking, parks and playgrounds nearby.
Moving to Seward in 2008 allowed us to expand into a larger space and be more centrally located while also staying local for our student base in the adjacent neighborhoods.
"Redesign is great at working on difficult building development issues and finding creative solutions."
How has Redesign been a part of your story?
We are in Seward because of Redesign! They wooed us to look at a space next to their office. It ended up being perfect and we moved to our present location in 2008.
Redesign commissioned us to create a mural on the west side of the building in 2009. It was ideated by our Youth Arts Collaborative collectively with our teaching artists.
Redesign collaborated with us in 2011 for the creation of a Reclamation Mural – a multimedia photo/painted community mural in response to a killing at a local Somali Market.
