The Arts Are Revitalizing West Broadway...

This video on YouTube was drawn to my attention by NoMi glass artist Connie Beckers, a.k.a. "The Goddess Of Glass." It's about artists and their role in revitalizing West Broadway. Here's what somebody told me about the video...

A documentary video by Samantha Robinson for the Northside Arts Collective:

This film project is an extension of a research project on the role of artists in urban redevelopment and gentrification that Samantha Robinson completed as a Lilly Fellow at Macalester College in the summer of 2009. She decided to use video, a medium with which she had limited experience, to recount North Minneapolis residents’ memories and reimaginings of West Broadway. After months of wrangling artists, business owners, and politicians, filming interviews, and editing numerous hours of footage, She submitted a final cut of “Visions” to the 2009 Filmanthropist Project Competition, a local film competition for amateur filmmakers with an emphasis on socially conscious filmmaking, in December.

Last month, “Visions” was selected as a top ten film, screened at the Oak Street Cinema, and awarded second place.

From a letter to the Northside Arts Collective Board of Directors, "I hope that this piece of artwork contributes to the achievement of the NAC’s goals, because the process of its creation has altered the course of my life."

As a result of this project, she is currently enrolled in two media arts courses at MCAD and plans to pursue an MFA in Film Production.

(Blog post by John Hoff, blogging on the road from Manhattan, Kansas)