FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

OPEN CALL: PROGRAMMING THE PLAZA
SUBMIT IDEAS TO PROGRAM MINI_POLIS AT THE
MINNEAPOLIS CONVENTION CENTER PLAZA THIS SUMMER BY APRIL 13

MINNEAPOLIS, (MARCH 16, 2015) The Minneapolis Convention Center (MCC), the Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy Program of the City of Minneapolis and Meet Minneapolis, Convention it can be every Thursday at noon; it can be every day at dawn; it can be one weekend and two nights -- its up to the planner what to propose, as long as it takes place between the first day and last day of the month and meets all regulatory requirements.

The commission fee for each month of programming is $10,000 inclusive of artist fees and production costs.

SUBMISSIONS ARE DUE MONDAY, APRIL 13, 2015, BY 4:30 P.M. CENTRAL TIME. Email questions to creativecitychallenge@northern.lights.mn [creativecitychallenge@northern.lights.mn] or visit www.minneapolis.org/minneapoli... [http://www.minneapolis.org/minneapolis-convention-center/on-the-plaza/programming-the-plaza] for more information.

CREATIVE CITY CHALLENGE BACKGROUND INFORMATION

The Creative City Challenge (CCC) is a competition for Minnesota-resident architects, landscape architects, urban designers, planners, engineers, scientists, artists, students and individuals of all backgrounds to create and install at the MCC Plaza a temporary, destination artwork. The artwork acts as a sociable and participatory platform for summer-long onsite programming, and encourages a sense of connectedness to the city as a whole and its rich cultural and natural offerings. The MCC Plaza is a green roof that is located directly across from the MCC at 1301 Second Avenue South.

The CCCs goal is to draw visitors and residents of the city to the Minneapolis Convention Center as a central meeting space for the surrounding area, as well as to provide a compelling gathering site for the MCCs thousands of visitors. The commission fee for the winning project is $75,000, inclusive of all artist fees, installation and de-installation costs. The winning project will remain on the MCC Plaza throughout the summer and be the site of public events to be announced at a later date. The MCC is a site of convergence for visitors to Minneapolis from around the country and the world, as well as being a part of the local neighborhood, and Minneapolis downtown.

More information about Creative City Challenge, past projects and the new winning project is available at [http://www.minneapolis.org/minneapolis-convention-center/ccc].

2015 WINNER: MINI_POLIS _BY _NIKO KUBOTA AND TEAM is a scale model of Minneapolis built in collaboration with community participants in a series of build workshops. The mini_polis team, led by local designer-educator-artists Niko Kubota, Jon Reynolds and Micah Roth, will collect place-based hopes and memories at the workshops and create a multimedia interface within the finished city model to share these stories. The completed mini_polis will be a landscape of lighted plywood buildings, laid out to approximate the Minneapolis downtown and surrounding neighborhoods. A multimedia interactive map station will allow visitors to interact with installation: selected buildings will light up and play the model builders story, giving the viewer a peek into the experiences and hopes of a particular place they can now locate in their city. View more about the project and a brief video explanation here: www.minneapolis.org/minneapoli... [http://www.minneapolis.org/minneapolis-convention-center/ccc/minipolis].

_ABOUT MINNEAPOLIS CONVENTION CENTER_

The Minneapolis Convention Center (MCC) is the largest indoor, contiguous, convention center in the Upper Midwest with over 1.5 million visitors annually, including 250,000 during the summer months. The MCC is more than a meeting place. It's more than a show space. It's a building all about building something elserelationships. A blend of form and function, the MCC provides aesthetically pleasing and innovative solutions for a variety of conferences, trade shows and events. With nearly 480,000 square feet of trade show space, 87 column-free conference meeting rooms, a 28,000-square-foot ballroom, and an auditorium with superb production and flexible technology options, the facility can handle any event from a small meeting to a large convention or trade show.

_ABOUT THE ARTS, CULTURE AND THE CREATIVE ECONOMY PROGRAM, CITY OF MINNEAPOLIS_

The Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy Program is an initiative of the City Coordinator's office established August 2011 to leverage the creative sector towards strengthening social and economic growth in the City of Minneapolis. The goals of the program are to: promote and coordinate city resources to develop the arts as an economic generator in alignment the city goal "art and artists are economic drivers in and of themselves, to stimulate cross-sector collaboration to strengthen the arts economy and community in Minneapolis and provide presence and visibility for the creative sector in the City of Minneapolis.

_ABOUT NORTHERN SPARK_

Northern Spark is produced by Northern Lights.mn, a non-profit arts organization dedicated to artists working innovatively in the public sphere, exploring expanded possibilities for civic engagement and encourage pluralistic community. This years festival begins at 9:01 p.m. on June 13 in Minneapolis. http://northernspark.org[http://northernspark.org/]

_ABOUT MEET MINNEAPOLIS_

Meet Minneapolis is a private, not-for-profit, member-based association. It actively promotes and sells the Minneapolis area as a destination for conventions and meetings, works to maximize the visitor experience and markets the city as a desirable tourist destination to maximize the economic benefit of the greater Minneapolis area.

Meet Minneapolis is accredited by the Destination Marketing Accreditation Program (DMAP) of the Destination Marketing Association International.

Online: www.minneapolis.org [http://www.minneapolis.org] and http://go.minneapolis.org [http://go.minneapolis.org]
On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/meetminneapolis?ref=ts [http://www.facebook.com/meetminneapolis?ref=ts]
On Twitter: http://twitter.com/meetminneapolis [http://twitter.com/meetminneapolis]
On Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/meetminneapolis/ [http://pinterest.com/meetminneapolis/]

_MEDIA CONTACT_
Kristen Montag, media communications manager, 612.767.8038, kristenm@minneapolis.org [kristenm@minneapolis.org], @Minneapolis_PR [http://goo.gl/M48J8] on Twitter.
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