Podcast: An All-Night Citywide Art Festival
“I like to think about a lot of the work we do as demonstration. What happens if there’s a dance performance on this plaza? What happens if we’re riding the train and looking through VR goggles at the same time? ... We get to practice being a different kind of city.”
Northern Spark is a free all-night art festival that has taken place in Minneapolis and St. Paul for the past several years. It's a one-night event but since 2011, it has more than included 535 artist projects in 120 venues, and attracted 222,000 attendees.
In this interview, Rachel Quednau chats with Sarah Peters, the Associate Director of the Northern Spark Festival, to find out how the event got started, how it has engaged the Twin Cities community, and how other cities can replicate this amazing program to encourage their communities to think creatively about place and use of space.
To the right are just a handful of photos from past Northern Spark events and you can view many more on Flickr.
The 2017 Northern Spark takes place 8:59pm, June 10 until 5:26am on June 11 along the Green Line light rail route in the Twin Cities. Find more info here.
Listen to the podcast:
(All photos from Northern Spark)