Tofte Lake Center

The organization hosted artists from Minnesota and across the country: total artists served: 86 our season consisted of 11 programmed residencies: we hosted two 12-day and one week-long individual creative residencies for artists from across disciplines, geography, backgrounds, and stages of career, providing artists with both the privacy and solitude to focus on their creative projects, and public opportunities to share their work with their artist colleagues and the local ely community. We hosted our msab residency program for bipoc artists from around the state of Minnesota to focus support and foster community for artists of color and ensure that they feel safe and welcome in nature, thanks to the generous support from the Minnesota state arts board. The weeks feature a dynamic mix of playwrights, dancers, writers, visual artists, and multi- disciplinary artists. With support from the national endowment for the arts we held our national emerging artists residency -- a two-week residency centering 6 artists from a variety of disciplines who are emerging in their field. Thanks also to the support of the Minnesota state arts board and the sustainable arts foundation, we held our second residency program for parent artists, which brought artists with families up to the Lake to create in intergenerational community, connect their children to nature, and develop work. In addition to these individual artist weeks, we hosted 8 new and veteran groups and organizations who gathered together at tlc this year: the april sellers dance collective, mcknight dancers and choreographers, playwright Center fellows, and octopus theatricals. In addition to these professional residencies, we once again partnered with macalester college in st. paul who lead an intense week of movement, writing, and theater design for their students. We partnered with local ely organizations by serving as a sponsor for the ely film festival for the second year, brought artists to camp northern lights to lead family workshops, and initiated our first winter residency taking 5 tlc artists up to camp du nord for a week-long residency experience ending in workshops for the families at camp. In governance, the board of directors and executive director hired a managing director in april as a first step in expanding our organizational capacity and sustainability, to expand our grant opportunities, deepen and strengthen our major, mid-range, and first-time donors, and continue to increase our individual contribution goals, and to help operationalize tlcs current strategic plan. The board also created a new fund called the birch fund, dedicated to providing fuller support for artists in residence at tlc by providing stipends and travel support. We continued to bolster our engagement with our alumni and community networks, deepen our collaborations with our local artistic and business partners and national peer organizations, and are leveraging new connections as we progress towards expanded access and fuller subsidies for artists across geographic, racial, cultural, economic, generational, genre, and ability lines.