Are you an artist or culture bearer who cares about your neighbors’ safety, connection, and everyday survival in a cold and icy policy climate?
Springboard for the Arts invites artists and culture bearers in Minnesota to apply for Artists Respond: Safety in Neighbors. This program supports neighborhood-scale projects that help neighbors find sanctuary places in their communities where care, safety, and solidarity already live.
Many immigrant, refugee, BIPOC, and working-class neighbors are living with increased fear, surveillance, and the threat of being questioned or displaced. It can feel cold, scattered, and lonely, even in places that are full of life. At the same time, there are people, spaces, ideas, and networks that quietly hold things together.
Artists Respond is a Springboard program that supports artists to create modest, community-rooted projects that rapidly respond to community issues and opportunities. Past rounds have focused on social isolation, equitable rural futures, environmental stewardship, rural-urban solidarity, and economic justice through guaranteed income.
Artists Respond: Safety in Neighbors activates the local: neighbors, block clubs, apartment buildings, whisper networks, and local businesses, and asks artists to make it easier for neighbors to find resources, solidarity, and each other.
Program goals
Artists Respond: Safety in Neighbors is designed to support small projects that make neighborhood care more intentional and accessible. The program aims to:
Support artists to lead creative projects that strengthen safety, care, and connection in rooted places (including but not limited to blocks, corridors, buildings, neighborhoods, or towns)
Lift up, enhance, and deepen the informal networks that strive to keep people safe.
Help neighbors know where to go for support, whether that means a hot meal, legal information, shelter, childcare help, translation, prayer, a listening ear, or a moment of rest.
Challenge fear and isolation by making it accessible and safe to seek help and to see oneself as part of a network.
Support artists and culture bearers who are directly impacted by these conditions to lead and shape the work.
Project scope and funding
Selected artists or artist teams will receive a stipend of $1,500 to design and carry out a small community-rooted project.
Projects should be modest in scale and designed to be planned and completed within approximately three to four months from contracting.
The $1,500 is intended to cover artist time, materials, and basic project costs.
Each funded proposal must name one Lead Artist who will receive the funds, manage the project, and be responsible for communication with Springboard.
Lead Artists can collaborate with other artists, neighbors, businesses and organizations as part of their project.
Projects must be rooted in a specific neighborhood or community in Minnesota.
Projects should be accessible to the people who live or spend time there
Projects can be visual, spatial, digital, or experience-based. For example:
A set of window signs or porch flags that mark warm houses or warm stores where someone is willing to help connect neighbors to key resources such as food, legal support, childcare, or translation
Neighborhood story circles, potlucks, or listening sessions in a mosque, church, storefront, or community room that help neighbors share experiences of staying safe and supporting each other, designed with careful consent and privacy
Pocket-sized tools such as illustrated cards, zines, small maps, or games that help neighbors learn their options, practice checking in on each other, or plan for moments of uncertainty
Creative social systems like phone trees, buddy systems, or skill-sharing series
We welcome both quiet, intimate projects and joyful, visible projects, as long as they are designed with safety, consent, and neighbor connection at the center.
Program Overview
Eligibility
This opportunity is open to artists, makers, and culture bearers of all disciplines, including visual arts, performance, music, storytelling, media and digital work, film, craft, design, interdisciplinary, and traditional and folk practices.
Applicants must:
Be 18 years of age or older.
Live in, work in, or have a long-standing relationship with a geographic community Minnesota
Be able to carry out a project within the program timeline.
Support and Expectations
Selected artists will be part of a small cohort. Springboard will provide:
An orientation session that includes introductions, project planning support, and shared agreements around consent, digital and physical safety practices, and safety for both artists and participants.
At least one mid-point group check-in and access to one-on-one support from Springboard staff during the project period.
Basic support with project logistics, communications, and documentation, and connections to community partners when possible.
Artists will be asked to:
Attend the cohort orientation.
Carry out their project as proposed, or in conversation with Springboard staff if changes are needed.
Submit a brief narrative reflection and at least one form of documentation that can be shared publicly in ways that do not increase risk for participants, such as photos without identifying information, audio, video, or written stories.
Projects that involve storytelling, images, or video will need clear and documented consent practices.
How to apply
Applications will be submitted through Slideroom. Written, audio, and video responses are all welcome. If you prefer to apply in a different format, such as by phone or with language interpretation, please reach out to sam@springboardforthearts.org.
We are not looking for polished or highly produced proposals. We are looking for grounded, thoughtful ideas that come from lived experience and neighborhood relationships.
The application will ask you to respond to these questions:
About you and your practice:
Tell us about yourself and your creative practice. How do you describe what you make or do?
Neighborhood focus and what you are noticing
What specific neighborhood, town, block, building, or corridor will you focus on?
How are you connected to this place?
What are you hearing or noticing from neighbors about safety, fear, connection, or belonging?
Project Idea
What do you want to do?
How might your project help neighbors find resources, solidarity, and each other?
Who might be involved, what will happen, where will it take place, and when?
Safety and care
How might you take care of people in this project, including yourself?
What steps will you take to keep participants as safe as possible and to get consent if you are sharing stories or images?
There is no separate budget requirement for this application. We expect that part of your plan will be to pay yourself and any collaborators fairly for your time within the $1,500 stipend.
Selection Criteria
Applications will be reviewed by a selection panel that includes artists, culture bearers, and community leaders. Panelists will read and rank applications using the criteria below:
Alignment with goals
The project clearly connects to neighborhood safety, care, and collective power in this moment, with attention to neighbors who are targeted because of race, religion, perceived immigration status, or where they live.
The project feels likely to build real connections, reduce isolation, and strengthen neighbor-to-neighbor support.
The project is designed in ways that do not increase risk for participants and that pay attention to consent and privacy.
Neighborhood/geography rootedness
The artist shows a strong connection and accountability to the neighborhood where the project will happen.`
The project is in relation to people who are already trusted there.
Leadership by those most impacted
Priority will be given to projects led by artists who share lived experience with the communities most affected by fear, surveillance, and displacement.
Feasibility
The project is realistic within the quick timeline and the $1,500 grant.
The scale of the idea matches the resources.
Timeline
Artists Respond: Safety in Neighbors is designed as a quick-response program so that projects can respond to this moment as it unfolds.
Applications open: Monday, December 22, 2025
Rolling deadline
Project period: February 1-April 30, 2026
Final reflections and documentation due: Friday, May 8, 2026
