The West Broadway Business and Area Coalition launches FLOW into its second decade with major improvements along the avenue.
FLOW Northside Arts Crawl is a three-day celebration of the arts in North Minneapolis on July 28-30. Visit the Plymouth Ave Block Party on Thursday, July 28 or make the rounds on the evening of Friday, July 29 for preview events, gallery receptions and public performances. Saturday, July 30 spend all day along West Broadway from the Mississippi River to Penn Ave as we showcase over 300 artists of all ages and experiences at 25 different locations with an exciting day of indoor and outdoor activities. Join us as we come together to create in community and kick off our second decade of shining a light on the Northside through the arts.
For over a decade FLOW’s mission has been to shine a light on the Northside community through the arts. Initially imagined as a small studio crawl with 20 artists and six sites for the PEACE Foundation, FLOW has grown and been shaped by the community to include over 300 artists from a variety of genres at 25 different studios, galleries, theaters, commercial and indoor and outdoor vacant spaces. Attendance has grown from 1000 in 2006 to 10,000 in 2015. FLOW highlights the diversity of assets in the Northside, and is grounded in the authentic and diverse partnerships between artists, arts organizations, businesses, nonprofit organizations and residents. Partners collaborate to showcase their ongoing work and to educate the broader public about the artistic, business, and cultural assets of North Minneapolis and the ongoing revitalization of the West Broadway corridor.
This year’s Art Crawl will see the installation of over $100,000 of artist designed projects as part of the West Broadway Arts Initiative funded by ArtPlace America. Amenities such as planters, benches, bike racks and information kiosks fabricated by Northsiders are being installed along the corridor in June and FLOW will celebrate the debut of a new public plaza on West Broadway that will be actively programmed in the second half of 2016.
Since 2006, FLOW Northside Arts Crawl has become both a community celebration and premier art event in North Minneapolis. FLOW is a non-juried, self-guided tour of studios, galleries, theaters, commercial and vacant spaces over a mile and half of the West Broadway corridor. From b-boys to ballet, graffiti to graphite, rap to rhapsody, fine artist to artisan, practicing to professional, FLOW showcases the great art being made every day on the Northside. FLOW is a program of the West Broadway Business and Area Coalition. For info visit flownorthside.org.