Join and celebrate the Loft's young writers as they read from works written in a Loft summer youth camp! This reading takes place from 12:30-1:30PM and is open to family, friends, and the public.

Step into the world of Artropolis, a three-part artist symposium at the Walker Art Center, where art is not just seen but experienced, boundaries dissolve, and new futures take shape. Over three nights in July and September, this symposium is a convergence of artistic minds—filmmakers, visual artists, musicians, and thought leaders—who dare to reimagine the urban landscape as a living, breathing canvas and celebrate our city’s unique art scene.

At Blackbird Revolt, we work to understand the realities of intersectionality in order to better support folks in our community that are disproportionately targeted by systems of oppression and violence. We unapologetically center these voices and work to ensure that we find ways to build power within our community. 

Our Creative Director will lead attendees through creating their own protest type similar to her process in creating the SKBP font.

zAmya Theater Project invites you to a Creative Expression Session! The Sessions are a fun space for people looking to learn performance skills, create skits and songs, use creative play, and tell their story. Open to all ages and abilities, including people with disabilities. People bringing the lived experience of homelessness are especially encouraged to attend. Creative Expression Session participants will be invited to work towards creative monologues and skits.

Each year French people celebrate Bastille Day ou le 14 juillet, on July 14th. Their National Holiday celebrates the moment when the French people stormed the Bastille prison in 1789 in order to get gun powder. This revolt is considered a major step towards the following events leading to the French Revolution. In France, la fête nationale is celebrated everywhere through numerous balls, live music, games, fireworks and a big parade on the Champs Elysées in Paris.

"Alebrijes: Keepers of the Island" brings 16 vibrant, large-scale Alebrije sculptures to the heart of Saint Paul in a stunning outdoor exhibit celebrating Mexican folk art, culture, and imagination. Created by master papier-mâché artists in partnership with the Minnesota Latino Museum and Mexican Cultural Center DuPage, this fantastical installation invites visitors of all ages to explore a world where myth, color, and creativity come alive along the Mississippi River.

Located on 730 East Lake Street in Minneapolis, the Urban Art Village is a FREE, vibrant, pop-up community space made from repurposed shipping containers. In this creative hub, art, culture, and community come alive!

Urban Art Village is a community-based art-activation created to uplift and support BIPOC, Latinx, Indigenous, LGBTQ+, immigrant, disabled, and emerging artists in Minneapolis.

We Outside is two evenings of curated cinema, showing films made by Black, Indigenous, Latino, and Arab filmmakers, highlighting stories of lineage, memory, and liberation. Right in the middle of a corridor that raised so many of us.

There will be food trucks, a live DJ interlude between screenings, live printed merch, and space to stretch out, post up, vibe and exhale. Bring your cousins, your chosen fam, your blanket, snacks and lawn chair. Or come solo and find your corner of joy. We Outside and you’re invited.

Visual art residing in and visiting the Twin Cities can provide powerful prompts for your writing! In this adventurous class, writer and Loft Executive & Artistic Director, Arleta Little, will invite participants to explore ekphrastic writing through discussion, exercises, and workshops while learning about visual art and artists from the 20th and 21st centuries.

Come make art with us! Mia provides free art activities for all ages at these Minneapolis park events. Join us to celebrate the warm weather and try our various art projects.

Tapestry Folkdance Center and the City of St. Paul Parks & Recreation are collaborating to bring the community Dancing in the Park—a free summer series offering the chance to learn new styles of dance with the help of an incredible lineup of instructors and live music bands. Today features a Family Dance with Robin Nelson & musicians.

Celebrate Mexican cultural craft through fiber art! Explore the history of Alebrijes, a folkloric spirit animal which originated in Mexico, and create unique patterns with a fabric version of Papel Picado. Youth ages 7-12 yrs will create works using a variety of fiber art techniques from traditional embroidery to needle felting and more!

En este taller, exploramos la historia de los alebrijes, los animales espirituales folklóricos originarios de México, y crearemos patrones únicos utilizando una versión de tela de Papel Picado. Los participantes crearán obras de arte empleando una variedad de técnicas, como bordado tradicional, fieltrado con aguja, ¡y más!

Join us for a low-key chat about the craft, business, and community of video game creation! Our meetup will be at Dogwood Coffee in St. Paul, accessible right from the Green Line (we liked it so much the first time we're doing it again!) We want to build a friendly community of local video game developers, and at this event we'll have a chill time talking shop and drinking coffee and tea. If you're interested, we'd love for new people to join us, we're a friendly bunch and you can help shape the community with your presence.

"Minnesota Nice" is sent packing at the monthly event where independent short filmmakers are left celebrated or humiliated by the power of mob rule! That's the premise of SCREAM it off SCREEN, the film party where audience members wield Gong Show-like editorial powers via their screams of praise or dissatisfaction — and each month, the merits of 15 short films are weighed via trial-by-verbal-combat, as their creators compete for cash prizes. We’re big, big fans of SIOS; don’t miss it!

Bockley Gallery is pleased to announce Grace Rosario Perkins’ (Diné/Akimel O’odham) debut solo exhibition with the gallery and in the Midwest. Fruits of the Spirit features Perkins’ signature gestural, densely layered, abstract paintings that exude the methods and intentions of their becoming: the artist’s intuitive conjuring of ritual and family – generations past, present, and future – to transmute hope, grief, and expansive feeling. Interested in disassembling her personal narrative through layering words, objects, colors and signs, she has referred to her practice as pictorial storytelling and scenographic placemaking.

Join St. Joseph’s School of Music-Saint Paul Conservatory of Music for a free performance series at the Minnesota History Center. Each concert features a unique program performed by members of the recently-merged music school’s faculty. For many years, Saint Paul Conservatory of Music has presented their daytime monthly Coffee Concerts. Don’t miss this chance to hear the series in the beautiful History Center Museum on select Thursday nights!

The Minnesota Orchestra offers a week of free outdoor performances—featuring classical favorites, film music, Sousa marches and more—as an annual thank-you to the community.

Dayton’s Bluff library hosts monthly Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) for teens! We are a safe space for both experts who want to join a campaign and newbs who want to learn the game. Learn how to DM (run the game), create your own character, be part of the team, and learn new skills. Meetings are safe spaces where respect is crucial and everyone's opinion is heard.

Celebrate the end of our season with us! Join our musicians and staff in celebrating the end of our 2024-2025 season! Enjoy heavy hors d’oeuvres, drinks, and live music while celebrating the Bach Society of Minnesota in true summer fashion at the Minneapolis Cider Company. All ages are welcome! Price includes hors d’oeuvres but does not include drinks.

Explore regional craft culture and engage with hands-on activities at this free, all-ages event.

American Craft Fest is the summer’s best opportunity to discover craft from across the region. Participate in fun hands-on activities for all ages led by local arts partners, shop handmade work by more than 50 emerging artists, and savor local beverages and food truck fare.

Welcome to Flavor & Flow! Ready to blend creativity, cake, and self-care in one unforgettable evening? This interactive 2-hour experience is all about connection, culture, and creative expression. You’ll dive into learning cake techniques, enjoy powerful spoken word performances from live guest poets, and even get the chance to write your own piece in a supportive, inspiring space. Plus, you’ll take home a cake you decorated yourself because flavor and flow go hand-in-hand!

What to Expect: • Hands-on Cake Decorating – take home your own uniquely designed treat • Fun Cake Facts & Techniques beginner-friendly and engaging • Powerful Spoken Word Performances – featuring live guest poets & storytellers • Learn Poetry History & Try Writing Your Own– no experience needed! • Bonus: Free food, beverages & a giveaway!

Mia is excited to offer an educator workshop in partnership with the Minneapolis College of Art & Design this summer.

The visual arts provide creative entry points for the exploration of identity. From ancient times to now, and around the world, artists have shared stories and images of personal, familial, and cultural identities. Through facilitated gallery tours and activities at Mia followed by art making sessions at MCAD, gain the tools for designing lessons around the topic of identity that support State Standards in the Arts and Social Studies, including Ethnic Studies.

This world premiere follows a team of working-class Hmong-American women practicing and competing in their ferocious Volleyball League here in Minnesota.

This high-energy script introduces the teammates as they show up for practice—but the more time we spend with these women, what the sport and the team mean to them become clear as life circumstances pull them in different directions.

Nationally heralded cat tour guide Chet Wedgely has vowed to return for an 8th season of #CatsOfTheWedge in 2025. This tour is appropriate for all ages and skill levels. If you are unable to spot cats, your tour guide will point them out for you.

If you live in the neighborhood and would like a chance to have your cat featured on the tour, register your cat at wedgelive.com/cat-tour

Thanks to our supporters on Patreon who make cat tours - and our hyperlocal news operation - possible: patreon.com/wedgelive. The 2025 cat tour grand marshal is Susan Lynx.

Join artist Lys Akerman-Frank and staff Elina Kotlyar in a learning conversation on how to successfully teach in Disabled and Neurodivergent spaces.

We are hoping to start an ongoing conversation and sharing of ideas and experiences on how to reduce barriers to art participation, while creating supportive and joyful environment for all participants.

Twin Cities youth join ThreeSixty for Radio Camp at MPR 2025. Produce audio stories related to the creative arts and conduct field interviews at The Loft Literary Center. Learn to record interviews, write radio scripts, and edit audio from reporters, editors, and technical staff. Receive a behind-the-scenes tour of MPR and hear broadcast and career tips from newsroom speakers.

Arrive Together is a Soul Line Dance Party for everybody hosted by Alexandrea Beaumont. Led by line dance instructor Tina Jackson of "Gotta Dance," this free even is an afternoon for moving together, connecting through rhythm and joy, and discovering "somatic solidarity" born out of dance.

Imagining Future Cities: Global and Minnesota Visions, Past & Present examines the enduring pursuit of the Future City, both globally and in Minnesota. The concept of future cities as a means to create more habitable, just, and sustainable places for people to live, work, and play has captivated visionaries across place and time. Organized by a team of University of Minnesota architecture and design faculty and students, this curated collection of illustrations, diagrams, and architectural drawings features groundbreaking case studies that reimagine the form and function of future cities. 

Through a perspective that bridges global examples with pivotal projects from Minnesota, Imagining Future Cities fosters dynamic dialogue between international trends and local ingenuity.

Join the Parade Band for a Lantern procession down the Greenway to celebrate Summer Solstice and welcome in the Summer!

Dance Party led by DJ Sci-Fi

Community singing with Sarina Partridge!

Partially funded by Lake Street Lift grant

Pay as you can. No one turned away for the lack of funds. Hope to see you there!

Juneteenth commemorates when the enslaved men, women and children of Galveston, Texas, became freed—more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. At Orchestra Hall this Juneteenth, hear stirring pieces written and performed by Black artists alongside the Minnesota Orchestra. 

Guests are also invited to explore a vibrant curated vendor space in the lobby, featuring ten African American-owned businesses. Support local Black entrepreneurs and experience the powerful intersection of music, culture and community.