FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Minneapolis Convention Center announces call for entries for 2015 Creative City Challenge

Third annual competition for Minnesota artists, architects and designers targets innovative public participation

Minneapolis (Sept. 24, 2014) - The Minneapolis Convention Center (MCC), the Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy Program of the City of Minneapolis and Meet Minneapolis, Convention & Visitors Association, in collaboration with Northern Lights.mn and the Northern Spark festival, announce the third annual Creative City Challenge. Entries are being accepted now through Dec. 1.

The Creative City Challenge 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 Minneapolis Convention Center Plaza a temporary, destination artwork, which 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 Plaza is a green roof that is located directly across from the MCC at 1301 Second Avenue South.

In its inaugural year, the Creative City Challenge selected the Minneapolis Interactive Macro Mood Installation(MIMMI) as the winner, and in 2014, Balancing Ground. The 2015 competition is emphasizing public participation in the design, creation and/or use of the artwork throughout the summer. This year, the competition is challenging teams to engage the broader community to participate in a meaningful way in the design, creation and/or ongoing use of the artwork.

Entries are accepted until 4:30 p.m. Central time, Monday, Dec. 1, 2014 (see entrant information below). On Nov. 18, an informational session will be conducted for entrants. A panel of stakeholders will select three finalists to develop their proposals by Feb. 23, 2015. Each finalist will receive a fee of $2,500 to prepare a final proposal. A jury comprised of local and national experts will select a winner, who will be announced March 11, 2014. The commission fee for the selected project is $75,000. The winning project will be installed at the MCC Plaza in early June 2014 as a part of the annual Northern Spark festival, and remain on the Plaza throughout the summer.

Minneapolis is a city infused with creative energy. From internationally recognized theatre and world-class museums and music venues to community art projects that transform neighborhoods, the arts are a critical element of what makes Minneapolis, City by Nature, a destination of choice for convention goers and leisure travelers alike. The 2013 Minneapolis Creative Index showed that Minneapolis creative vitality is roughly five times above the national average and the Twin Cities metropolitan area ranks sixth in the nation for creative spending, jobs and organizational revenue.

This years Creative City Challenge is an exciting opportunity for us to highlight the work of architects, artists and designers who prioritize community participation in their work, said Gulgun Kayim, director of the Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy Program, City of Minneapolis. I am very excited to see how our creative community defines participation and engages the community with the plaza and the rest of the city.

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.

The Minneapolis Convention Center is more than a meeting place, said Jeff Johnson, executive director, MCC. We call it a relationship building. Our goal is to connect with our community as an activity center while also acting as a gateway to Minneapolis for convention center visitors.

The winning Creative City Challenge project will be unveiled and featured at the opening of Northern Spark, an annual dusk-to-dawn festival with tens of thousands of participants taking place in Minneapolis on June 13, 2015.

ENTRANT INFORMATION

Entries are due by 4:30 p.m. Central time on Monday, Dec. 1, 2014. Submission information can be found online at http://www.minneapolis.org/minneapolis-convention-center/ccc/creative-city-challenge-submissions.

If materials are needed in an alternative format, call Lance Knuckles at (612) 673-2919 or email Lance.Knuckles@Minneapolismn.gov. Deaf and hard of hearing persons may use a relay service to call Minneapolis 311 agents at (612) 673-3000. TTY users may call (612) 673-2157 or (612) 673-2626.

Additional information is online at http://www.minneapolis.org/minneapolis-convention-center/ccc, including an overview, details about past projects and media coverage. Email creativecitychallenge@northern.lights.mn with questions.

Balancing Ground, created by Amanda Lovelee, Christopher Field, Kyle Waites and Sara West, was the 2014 winning project of the Creative City Challenge in Minneapolis.

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 CREATIVE ECONOMY PROGRAM, CITY OF MINNEAPOLIS

The Arts, Culture and 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. The next festival begins at 9:01 p.m. on June 13, 2015 in Minneapolis.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.

Find out more:

Online: www.minneapolis.org and http://go.minneapolis.org

On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/meetminneapolis?ref=ts

On Twitter: http://twitter.com/meetminneapolis

On Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/meetminneapolis/

MEDIA CONTACT
Kristen Montag, communication manager, 612.767.8038, kristenm@minneapolis.org, Minneapolis_PR on Twitter.