Our upcoming Neighborhood Conversations event will be hosted by renowned facilitators who will lead us in a wonderful community discussion that will result in a vision for the Cleveland Neighborhood in the years to come. Find out a little more about one of our facilitators today, David Ellis. Register Today!
Dave is a freelance host practitioner whose work has taken him through the worlds of corporate, governmental and nonprofit organizations. He is a resident of North Minneapolis’ Hawthorne Community and community leader skilled at working with groups large and small on conversations that matter. His current focus is in communities that want to make true and substantial change on large scale issues like disparities in healthcare, education and criminal justice; youth concerns; and culturally specific issues. Dave has done considerable work in leadership development, diversity and inclusion, network building and community engagement. He is a newly named Steward of the Art of Hosting and Harvesting Conversations That Matter.
In collaboration with Voices Merging, the Cleveland Neighborhood Association will be hosting Listening Sessions and Writing Workshops with local Spoken Word artist every Friday in April at the Cleveland office. Join us from 5-7 pm to share your thoughts on the community and issues that are important to you, enjoy some refreshments and then practice your writing skills and learn from local Spoken Word artists.
First session is this Friday, April 5, 2013 at the CNA offices. For more information contact Brianna@clevelandneighborhood.org or call (612) 276-2624
The Cleveland Neighborhood Association is proud to office out of our community public school, Lucy Craft Laney. Not only are the students full of energy and happy greetings when they pass by the office on their way to recess, but Laney staff have also been going to great lengths to promote healthy living in their students and this year they are being recognized as Local Heroes in promoting Public Health! Here’s the official announcement from the City of Minneapolis:
The City’s celebration of National Public Health Week this year will include honoring the contributions of community partners in strengthening the health of our city. …These Local Heroes exemplify one of the themes of National Public Health Week: A Safe, Healthy Home for You and Your Family; A Safe, Healthy Environment for Children at School; A Safe Environment While on the Move; and A Healthy Community.
Lucy Laney Community School (staff, students, and families) for promoting active living through their Safe Routes to School, International Walk to School Day, walking club, staff-led Walking School Buses, a shared bike fleet (with Nellie Stone Johnson & Loring Community School), and after school bike club. These efforts, guided by the school Wellness Committee and championed by Middle School Administrator Lisa Pawelak and School Nurse Jessica Findell, create A Safe, Healthy Environment for Children at School.
The City will be recognizing Lucy Laney staff and other Local Heroes on April 3rd at 11:30am. Join them and show your support if you are able.
The Northside Transportation Network (NTN) is collecting public comments to share with the Met Council regarding community input on transit development in north Minneapolis. Comments are due by the end of the day today. Please consider taking NTN’s survey here. As well as read below for more info from NTN about the comment period:
The Met Council is taking public comments to consider a local preferred alternative (mode or alignment) for the Bottineau Transitway. This alignment was recommended by the Hennepin County Regional Rail Authority to include:
1. Light rail transit on the West Broadway in Brooklyn Park – Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corridor – Olson Memorial Highway alignment (Alternative B-C-D1)
2. The proposed amendments also reflect proposed changes that include listing Lake Street and Hennepin Avenue along with Penn Avenue and Emerson-Fremont Avenues in north Minneapolis as potential Arterial Bus Rapid Transit corridors
3. Studied for other modes such as streetcar.
This is an important step for us to take part in making a positive impact for our community. We need to express our concern and offering comments before the Council votes.
Hurry, take action and provide your comments, oral or written comments as follows:
Written comments to: Metropolitan Council Public Information. 390 North Robert St., St. Paul, MN 55101-1805/ ATTN: 2030 Transportation Policy Plan Amendments
Fax comments to Public Information at 651-602-1464
Record comments on the Metropolitan Council’s Public Comment Line at 651-602-1500
You can also click on the link below to take a quick survey about expanding transportation in north Minneapolis. Your voice matters A LOT! Also, please pass on this message on to other residents of north Minneapolis. Thanks you so much for you time!
Through an authentic community process, NTN strives to insure that our region’s investment in the Bottineau Transit way contributes to a vibrant, economically successful North Minneapolis.
We will continue to provide ongoing authentic community engagement.
The first of a series of quarterly community gatherings for Northside residents, neighborhood organization boards, and staff kicked off quite successfully this past Tuesday at the Capri Theater. The evening was full of socializing, networking, information sharing, delicious food and non-alcoholic beverages for happy hour, as well as some great presentations and prizes. Take a look at some of the great photos from the evening on Facebook.
The Cleveland Neighborhood was well represented with residents, board members and staff in attendance. The event was also hosted by the Northside Neighborhood Council, a collaboration of north Minneapolis neighborhood organizations of which the Cleveland Neighborhood Association is a part.
If you missed this event, be sure to mark your calendar for the next one June 11th, 6-8pm. We’ll serve some delicious food again and feature some wonderful speakers again, which could be you!*
*Details on submitting a presentation for an upcoming event will be posted at NorthFirst.org in the coming weeks.
In continued collaboration with the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Minnesota, Cleveland staff and Hennepin County staff served as guests for a design critique for student projects that focused on a redesign of Cleveland Park, with consideration of the Penn and Lowry corner.
The design covered a vast array of ideas and possibilities, many a complete redesign of the entire space, some including existing park structures. The goal of the project for the students was to simply work with a real life example for their course. They used community feedback gathered from last fall’s Park project and surveyed the site with Cleveland staff earlier in the semester.
This summer we’ll share the wide range of designs with residents and park users at an event in the park. The value of a collaboration like this for the Cleveland community is the great visuals from the students designs can help educate residents about what’s possible for our community and to learn about design elements that we might not be aware of in thinking about community space. This knowledge will help better inform our community so that we can better ask for what we want and give feedback to community projects and to developers and government entities that might be interested in developing the space.
Stay tuned for more of the designs posted online and at one of our summer Community Development gatherings.
Spring is almost here, summer is around the corner, and that means we are gearing up for Live On The Drive! If you haven’t put it on your calendar already the dates are June 13th, July 11th, August 8th from 6-8pm on Victory Memorial Parkway. Like it on Facebook to get all the updates. This summer, like we kicked off last year, we’ll be partnering with the Minneapolis Parks to bring you Movies in the Park after the concert each evening this summer. Which movies will be showing? That’s up to you!
Leave your suggestions in the comments. We’ll be using the suggestions to form a list of about 5-10 movies that will be part of our Audience Choice voting for each of the upcoming Live on the Drive – Movies in the Park features.
Stay tuned for a lot more info about Live on the Drive soon, but for now share with us that movie favorite you’d love to watch with your neighbors on the Parkway this summer!
March Mayhem is this Sunday, 1-4pm at Cleveland Park and we’re dubbing it the Snow Fort Flash Mob! Come join your friends and neighbors and have one last day of fun in the snow. We’ll build the biggest snow fort we can at Cleveland Park to enjoy before the snow melts away.
Bring your friends, bring your neighbors and join us for some winter fun. If the weather is frightful, we will be in the Cleveland Office (south end of Lucy Craft Laney School) to play board games and card games. Refreshments will be served.
[button link=”https://www.facebook.com/events/334391143327467/?fref=ts” type=”big”] RSVP on Facebook[/button]
For more info or Questions call the office 612-588-1155
Street Forum – Outreach Specialist – Part Time Temporary Independent Contractor
Summary
Engage transit riders in a conversation about transportation, gather contact information and interview them on video sharing their input on transit.
Example of duties and responsibilities
● Standing at bus stops talking to those waiting for the bus
● Using a tablet device to show a brief video to residents
● Using a video camera to ask questions of residents and interview them
● Gather contact information for community residents interested in learning more
● Upload videos to the website
● Document when videos were taken, at which stops and times of day
The part-time Outreach Specialist will be responsible for talking to residents and gathering their input on the topic of transit. This person needs to be outgoing and effective at inviting residents to participate in the project. They should be familiar with the transit system, ideally a frequent public transit user themselves, and willing to become knowledgeable about the topic of future transit development. They should be comfortable speaking in public and presenting information in a clear and concise way.
This position will require a flexible schedule and the ability to stand for extended periods of time. This is a temporary position that will end around October 2013.
Please email a letter of interest to hiring@clevelandneighborhood.org
During the summer of 2012, the Cleveland Neighborhood Association staff and board began to utilize some of the great tools provided by an organization called Civic Center to engage residents in conversations about their community. We hosted a community gathering in the Cleveland Neighborhood with the theme, “I Want _____ in my neighborhood.” We continued using the stickers and asking the question at our Live on the Drive summer concerts and while out in the community during National Night Out, door knocking, Cleveland Park parties and more.
Our amazing Mural installers!
Then, last fall, we had the opportunity to collaborate with a couple students from the U of M design department and some northside residents to try another community engagement project originating from Civic Center. A large mural that provides chalk and asks residents about their hopes and dreams with the prompt: “Before I die I want to ____.” These murals have been successfully done all over the world, including in the Whittier neighborhood in south Minneapolis and with youth at Kulture Klub. We felt it was a great opportunity to turn a vacant lot into an interactive space for residents who often don’t have voice in the community to share with one another their hopes and dreams in a public space.
We received a permit from Hennepin County to install the mural on the empty lot at the North West corner of Penn and Lowry Avenue. We also received support from the Minneapolis Arts Commission, who gave the following reasons:
“The mural strongly engages the community and generates hopeful responses.
Candy Chang and this project are internationally recognized.
The Whittier neighborhood has had a positive experience with the same project.”
We asked several residents about the choice of wording before deciding to keep the identical language to the international project, recognizing that it had some chance for controversy, but that the provocative nature of the question is part of what made it a successful project.
Our goal with this project was to engage the diverse residents that we serve in our community. We feel we’re accomplishing that, but did not realize it would also offend many others. Our ongoing commitment is to engage the residents of the Cleveland Neighborhood and the northside. We are willing to take risks and try innovative ways of doing that, but we realize we’re making mistakes along the way and learning as we go. We believe we will continue to learn from this experience and hope we can do far better in the future.
Whose mural is it? The Cleveland Neighborhood Association owns the mural. It was put up with support from some students and staff at the University of Minnesota. The concept for the mural is a part of an international series of Before I Die murals that originated with artist Candy Chang.
How often is there profanity? There have been 13 instances of inappropriate language on the mural that the CNA staff is aware of, out of well over 200 total statements written. The most notable of those instances are ones that a resident took a picture of on December 22nd and has circulated widely on Facebook. Those statements were written sometime in the evening before and removed within 2 hours of the first facebook posting. While the circulation of this single image has given the impression that the board is frequently filled with vulgar language and profanity that has not been the case.
Does anyone monitor it? Staff at the Cleveland Neighborhood Association monitors the mural multiple times a day. The chalk is removed when the spaces fill up or no one is able to monitor it in a 24 hour period. We recognize this is a public space and though the question elicits a variety of responses, we remove those that are unreadable or inappropriate for the space. We are not able to monitor the board 24/7 and do encourage residents to remove inappropriate language if they deem it necessary, but please do let us know so we can keep accurate and transparent documentation of the project overall.
What was with that hole in the mural? On Sunday, January 20th, the panels of the mural came off during a windy day. We recognize this incident was due to a mistake in installation materials. We removed the panels from the sidewalk and left the frame standing as we discussed reinstalling the mural. We reinstalled the majority of the mural on January 29th. The mural had recently been featured in the February North News and we felt it was important to have it up as soon as possible. However, when reinstalling we realized one of the panels broken edge needed to be glued together to be properly replaced. That step took longer than expected and we replaced the missing panel section on February 13th. We recognize that many found the missing panel unsightly and we apologize for not fixing it sooner.
Isn’t the word “Die” inappropriate for our community? We are aware of the unique implications the use of the word “die” has within our community were youth violence has caused tragedies in our families and communities. We recognize that this public display has appeared insensitive to some whose family has been personally affected by this violence in our community and for that we are sorry. Other young people and residents we’ve talked to have seen the choice of language as powerful for the same reason. We also recognize others see it as willingness to not skirt around language in an attempt at better community PR and still others disagree with that point. We are learning from all of this, we’ve made mistakes along the way, and we know that when this project is over we’ll look back and recognize how we could do it better.
Is this temporary? Yes, this is a temporary installation. The permit we were given goes till June, but we hadn’t intended on keeping it up that long. It was never intended to be a permanent installation. Our plan has been to move, disassemble or repurpose the piece sometime in the next few weeks. That decision will be decided by the Cleveland Neighborhood Board. CNA has been actively involved in the possible future development of this corner for some time and we continue to support the eventual development of the Lowry-Penn intersection.
The Cleveland Neighborhood Association is proud to office out of our community public school, Lucy Craft Laney. Not only are the students full of energy and happy greetings when they pass by the office on their way to recess, but Laney staff have also been going to great lengths to promote healthy living in their students and this year they are being recognized as Local Heroes in promoting Public Health! Here’s the 
The 
March Mayhem is this Sunday, 1-4pm at Cleveland Park and we’re dubbing it the Snow Fort Flash Mob! Come join your friends and neighbors and have one last day of fun in the snow. We’ll build the biggest snow fort we can at Cleveland Park to enjoy before the snow melts away.
Summary
During the summer of 2012, the Cleveland Neighborhood Association staff and board began to utilize some of the great tools provided by an organization called 