Request for Proposal: Teaching Artist Series

Application deadline April 30, 2018.

Minnesota Children’s Museum’s mission is sparking children’s learning through play. In 2017, we successfully opened a reimagined children’s museum in the Twin Cities. The new experiences are grounded in the latest research on child development. Through immersive experiences and environments that encourage children’s active exploration and adult participation, the museum highlights play as a critical ingredient in every child’s development. In addition to annually reaching more than 430,000 visitors at the downtown Saint Paul location, the museum also serves 2.3 million visitors through traveling exhibits and statewide educational programs.

Minnesota Children’s Museum programs provides arts experiences to capture the hearts and imaginations of our visitors while giving many their first arts learning experience. The Teaching Artist Series engages children and parents in guided arts learning drop-in activities in which they create or respond to art.

Designed for early learners, the Teaching Artist Series welcomes artists from a variety of arts disciplines. The focus of these experiences is to allow visitors to explore the creative process alongside a professional artist to ignite a passion for a new generation of Minnesota artists.

Guidelines

Minnesota Children’s Museum’s Teaching Artist Series aims to create opportunities for cross-cultural connections and celebrates the strength of Minnesota’s diversity by engaging diverse contributors in shaping and presenting experiences with and for our visitors. Artists of all abilities and backgrounds are encouraged to apply. All art mediums will be considered. Art work and programming for the Teaching Artist Series should be appropriate for Minnesota Children’s Museum’s audience. The artist must be comfortable working with children ages 2+ in an active environment that is lively and fast-paced.

Abilities

• Demonstrated capabilities for working on immersive, collaborative, and interactive projects
• Comfort working with multiple ages at once: children ages 2+ and adults (parents, guardians, and teachers).
• Understanding that the artist will interact with different children every day. There will not be regular on-going interaction with the same children day after day.
• Ability to create programming that can engage children of multiple ages.
• Comfort level working in a non-traditional arts setting.
• Ability to interact with customers in a quick drop-in setting but be flexible enough to allow some visitors to go deeper or stay longer
• Ability to adapt to unexpected changes.
• Strong communication skills, essential for coordinating with Museum staff around programming, learning and exhibits.
• Availability weekdays and weekends.

Application Procedure

Applications must be filled out online.
Application with all sections completed and all attachments included must be received by the deadline for consideration.