Thank you to the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) for inviting Water Bar out to Fulton Brewery for Parks on Tap last Thursday night! It was fun to be part of a conversation connecting water quality to beer and brewing in the Twin Cities. You can't have beer without good clean water! And you can't have Water Bar without great volunteer water tenders: Thank you to Bud (pictured here) for joining our crew!
Last night we brought Water Bar to the IDEA Conference, an international gathering for energy professionals convened by District Energy in Saint Paul. As part of this conference, District Energy held a "Community Energy Forum" for students and the public to learn about the present and future of the field. We were just one of the engaged art projects featured at this event. Thanks to Nina and District Energy for inviting us, and to volunteer water tenders Deborah, Pat, and Megan (not pictured) for helping to serve water and conversation!
Jackson Square Park is our own neighborhood park, just a few blocks from our apartment and from Water Bar & Public Studio. On Monday night, we brought the pop-up Water Bar out to the park for the annual summer movie night put on by Minneapolis Parks and the Holland Neighborhood Improvement Association (HNIA). It was fun to talk with kids and families about local water and water issues, and to hear from them about what they're planning to do this summer now that school is out. We plan to bring Water Bar back to Jackson Square throughout the summer.
Volunteer water tender and University of MN School of Public Health Alum Carrie tending bar at our pop-up for the Eat, Learn, Gather event last Friday! Thank you Carrie and the SPH Alumni Association for bringing us out for this community education event!
Last week, The Theater of Public Policy (T2P2) invited Water Bar to one of their shows at the Bryant-Lake Bowl Theater. The theme of the event was 'H2-Uh-Oh' and we served three local taps to attendees as they arrived. T2P2 invites experts to the stage for conversations about policy issues, then interprets those conversation through improv theater. It was our first time checking out the show, and we were thrilled to see Deborah Swackhamer talking about Minnesota water. It was an entertaining way to learn more about one of the most important issues in our lives. Thank you to T2P2 for inviting us, and to water tender Ryan for volunteering behind the bar!
Last Thursday night Water Bar traveled to the Great River Gathering, an annual event presented by the Riverfront Corporation. We served three waters, each with its own story connecting it back to the themes of the event, Design for Equity. Our bartenders Amoke, Brian, Sarah and Amy shared their own knowledge and perspectives on water -- from cultural organizing around water issues as a way to address both environmental justice and public health disparities; to policy work at the local and State level; to ecological issues and narratives. The bar was busy, and we connected with several local watershed districts and other civic organizations who plan to request the Water Bar at their own events later this year, including a great idea to host a water bar for young women interested in science and environment careers!
We look forward to continuing our collaboration with the Riverfront Corporation as we design and build a mobile Water Bar with our partners from the indigenous artist-led Healing Place Collaborative, which will be part of this fall's Riverfront Balcony Prototyping Festival.
Thank you to Riverfront Corporation for bringing Water Bar to Saint Paul, and to our water tenders Amoke Kubat, Amy Brendmoen, Brian Huberty and Sarah Wolbert!
Last Saturday Asia Ward brought a unique life drawing workshop to Water Bar & Public Studio. Using microscopes and a projector, we got a closer look at some of the life you can find in the waters (and on the banks) of the Mississippi River.
As an artist and educator, Asia has long been involved in creative projects that blend art and science. In addition to her own sculpture and media artwork, Asia creates interactive workshops that invite participants to explore the natural world and technology. In the process, she introduces new ways of seeing the environment, of gathering and interacting with data, and encourages people to tinker and to make things that utilize systems and processes many of us take for granted. Energy and water are both common materials and systems that she explores in her work.
At Saturday's drawing workshop, Asia brought water samples that she'd gathered from the Mississippi River, and projected images of the life she found in those waters, and on the land nearby. We were given drawing pads and a variety of drawing tools and invited to sketch what we saw while she and her collaborators explained a little bit about the creatures and plants we were looking at. We also talked about how the numbers and types of organisms found indicate different things about the quality of the water in the river at that time.
Checkout this article to learn a little more about Asia Ward, one of the artists we hope to work with regularly here at Water Bar & Public Studio. You can also see one of Asia's sculptures on display here during and after our public opening May 20-22nd at Art-A-Whirl.
Since we announced plans to open a permanent location we've had an outpouring of interest in volunteering behind the bar and in other ways. This is one of things we love most about this project, getting to know who else cares about water and water issues, and what they have to share with the public.
Sign-up here to get volunteer information via email
We're hosting three volunteer meet-ups next week in our new space!
Tuesday, May 17th, 8-10AM
Wednesday, May 18th, 4-6PM
Thursday, May 19th, 4-6PM
These meet-ups are a fun and social way to check out the Water Bar & Public Studio, meet other people interested in water and related topics, and to learn about opportunities to volunteer. There are no minimum time commitments for volunteering, and we value a wide range of prior knowledge and experience!
What are some of the benefits of volunteering at Water Bar? It's a fun way to share what you know and care about with other people, and to gain experience engaging public audiences. We've also heard from our volunteers that they learn a lot in the process. Regular volunteers are also invited to use the new Water Bar space, Water Bar pop-up, or studio resources for their own projects and programming.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us through the Water Bar contact form. Thank you and we hope you'll visit soon!
Friday night was a hot one! People were thirsty at ASI's Light Up the Night event, and we were there to serve them tap water, two ounces at a time, and with a side of information about local water sources and ways to get involved in water issues.
Thanks to Water Bar water tenders Kate, Dan & Luci for helping out behind the bar! And thank you to ASI for including us in your fun event!
If you want to bring Water Bar to your business or community, you can make a request here. The Water Bar pop-up is one of the ways we sustain our permanent location and public programming in Northeast Minneapolis, so please share the link with others who might be interested!
Thanks so much to our friend Stef (P.O.S) for helping us open up the new Water Bar & Public Studio with a tiny benefit show for 75 people. The folks who showed up last Thursday night brought great energy to the space. It felt like we were in someone's kitchen just chatting it up about the importance of knowing our water sources, of making social space for creativity and community, and of course, getting to know the artists and musicians who inspire us on a more human level.
Proceeds from the show will help us launch and sustain the Water Bar & Public Studio project, so thank you to all who gave or bought a ticket. Hope to see folks again at some of our upcoming events and programs. As Stef said, don't just show-up once for P.O.S and never think of it again, get involved here or elsewhere, and build the kinds of art, culture and community spaces you want and need.
Photos by the amazing Zoe Prinds-Flash.
Our first neighborhood night and happy hour was a lot of fun! It was great to see the place filled with people, including lots of kids, and one dog. We had great conversations with neighbors and neighboring businesses, as well as with political leaders from State and City Government, about environmental sustainability and water quality in Northeast Minneapolis. It got us thinking expansively about the many ways we might work together to improve public spaces and systems, and to catalyze creative activities and projects that engage and empower people as part of ecologies of place.
Thank you to everyone who stopped by, especially the folks from Holland Neighborhood Improvement Association and Kevin Reich / Ward 1 City Council for co-hosting! And to Mississippi Watershed Management Organization for helping behind the bar and sharing information about some of the watershed projects happening in and around Northeast Minneapolis.
We hope to see folks next month for another neighborhood gathering on Thursday, June 2nd, 5-7PM at Water Bar & Public Studio!
Last Wednesday afternoon we held our first workshop at Water Bar & Public Studio. One of our hopes for the project is that we will be able to offer free workshops where people can teach and learn from one another about water, place and environmental sustainability; where they can make and do things; and where they can gather context as to why their own actions are important.
For Wednesday's workshop, we were joined by Summer Streets and Katrina Kessler, both scientists with different backgrounds on the topic of emerging contaminants and water quality.
In addition to working as a researcher and educator with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), Summer is on the board of an organization called Made Safe, which certifies household and personal care products as being free of known toxic chemicals. Katrina, formerly with MPCA, has just started a new position as Director of Surface Water and Sewers for the City of Minneapolis.
We started the workshop by each sharing our own backgrounds in this topic, and why it is personally important to us. One attendee said that the first time she started to really think about her impact on the water system was when she moved to Northeast Minneapolis from the suburbs, and was suddenly in closer proximity to the Mississippi River.
After a short illustrated talk about how the products we use on and in our bodies and homes end up in the environment, primarily through wastewater treatment, we learned about how researchers test water and products, and what they do and don't know about the impact of toxics.
I realized that while I think about the cleaning products I buy (and try to buy those without harmful chemicals), I almost never think about the accumulated impact of everything that washes down my drain. From the medicines and caffeine I consume, to the soaps and lotions I put on my body, all of this ends up in our wastewater treatment facility. It may not seem like much, but when you add up all of the people who live in our region, this becomes a huge problem.
While our treatment facilities do an amazing job cleaning water before returning it to the water system (in our case, the Mississippi) they can't get everything out, especially those compounds that are small and persistent. These chemicals, many of which come from pharmaceuticals and household products, are showing up in the environment, and scientists are just beginning to learn what impact they have on aquatic life and public health.
I learned that regulation of the ingredients in products sold to consumers is complex and difficult to enforce. Most of us can't decipher labels, and there are so many different chemicals (which go by different names) in use today that it would be nearly impossible to know and remember them all.
Summer's advice was to look for products with few ingredients, to avoid products with dyes or fragrances, and if you're able, to make your own cleaners and lotions from non-toxic ingredients. If you can recognize and pronounce it, and you can eat it, that's a great place to start.
We closed the workshop by mixing up our own household cleaners from common ingredients, and by swapping recipes for cleaners and personal care products. Here is a link to a few resources shared with us by Summer and Katrina. Summer also shared her own personal list of recipes for body care products that are made from natural ingredients. We'll be putting those into a recipe book that we'll make available here at Water Bar and online.
Thank you to Summer & Katrina for sharing your knowledge with us, and to everyone who came out for the workshop.
Yesterday we brought the Water Bar to REI in Bloomington, MN, for a party and film festival celebrating the National Park Service Centennial. Park Rangers from around the region worked the bar, offering people tasting flights of water gathered from within our National Parks, including the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, a National Park that flows through our own neighborhood along the Mississippi River. Did you know that the Mississippi River is both a National Park in our own backyard AND the source of our City's drinking water? Thank you to REI for bringing us out for this fun celebration, and to those Park Rangers who volunteered to tend bar!
On Friday, we brought Water Bar to Minnesota Public Radio for their all-staff 'coffee break,' where they were kicking off a month of water reporting and public engagement programming. Thank you to MPR for bringing the Water Bar to your staff, and to volunteer water tenders Matt Anfang, Roopali Phadke, Amy Brendmoen and Darrel Gerber. This pop-up is one of the ways we support the ongoing Water Bar project.
We've been busy lining up a series of events for our SIP Fund donors and other supporters of the Water Bar & Public Studio. Before we open our doors to the public, we want to give you a sneak peek at the types of art, culture, and environment programming that will be part of the new space in the future. Checkout our calendar for details, and donate to our SIP Fund to have your name added to the RSVP list we'll keep at the door.
For those who don't know our story, we're currently a volunteer-run project, led by Works Progress Studio. Recently, we made the decision to incorporate Water Bar & Public Studio as its own entity, in partnership with the Holland Neighborhood(HNIA) and a loose collaborative of other nonprofit organizations and public entities. We've received a $5,000 seed grant from HNIA in support of this collaborative project, but other than that grant, the space and our activities are entirely supported by small donations, volunteer efforts, and income earned through rentals and bringing the Water Bar pop-up to other events.
Your donations help sustain the space and to build our public programs, gathering the supplies we need and collaborating with other artists on small projects. SIP Fund events are one of the ways we can thank our supporters in person, and show you (rather than just tell you) what we're up to. Follow us on Facebook to get updates and invites, or say hello if you happen to see us working in the new space this month. On May 5th, everyone (SIP Funders or not) is invited to join us for the first in a monthly series of neighborhood gatherings, which will focus attention on art and environment projects happening around northeast Minneapolis.
The building where we'll be opening our new space, in the storefront on the left, which has just been renovated beautifully by the owners.
Last week we signed a lease agreement for our new space on Central Avenue in northeast Minneapolis! This picture is out of date, the space has recently been renovated (with much love and sweat) by the new owners, who live upstairs. We've begun to move in our Water Bar furniture, and are in the process of getting the permits and licenses we need to open our doors to the public.
The space has a lot of history for the neighborhood. It used to be the office for the Holland Neighborhood Improvement Association (HNIA), one of our primary partners on the Water Bar & Public Studio project. It was also the campaign headquarters for Ward 1 City Council person Kevin Reich, who along with HNIA, will be helping us to host a neighborhood gathering on May 5th, so that we can meet some of our northeast neighbors and connect with other art and sustainability efforts in the community. We're so grateful for their support, as well as the support of our other partners and SIP Fund donors!
Checkout our calendar to see what we have planned for the space in May! We'll be hosting a number of programs and events for our SIP Fund donors before our doors open to the public during Art-A-Whirl May 20th - 22nd. To donate and to add your name to that RSVP list, click here. More details will be shared via this website and our email list, which you can join by sending us a note through the contact form on our main page.
Last Friday night we brought Water Bar to the TedxMinneapolis spring salon, an evening program that introduced people to Minnesota's agriculture system. Presenters at the 'Reap & Sow' event explored ways that people across Minnesota are repairing or reestablishing the relationships between food, farming, and communities. Water is an important part of this story.
We served three Minnesota waters, including water from Buhl in northeastern Minnesota, and from a farm in rural Montevideo, which is in western Minnesota. Our bartenders shared this water and talked with people about the connections between land use, food production, energy, and water issues. Thank you to volunteer water tenders Nina, Audrey, and Daniel for sharing your knowledge and your water stories!
Learn how to bring Water Bar to your event or community by clicking here.
Today we moved the Water Bar into the new space on Central Avenue, just north of Lowry. We still have a lot of work to do to prepare for our public opening, but this is a big step for our collaborative, and a motivating one at that! It already looks and feels like home.
We're excited to invite our partners and supporters in to preview the space. We'll be making some announcements this week about a series of talks, workshops, and social gatherings we're planning with and for our "SIP Fund" supporters. If you'd like to help us reach our ambitious fundraising goal (so we can install the bar sink we need, get tables and chairs, pay for the permits and insurance we're required to carry, and gather supplies for the public art and sustainability studio) you can give through our ongoing fundraiser. Larger tax exempt donations can be made, just use the contact form on this website to connect with us.
Thank you to everyone who is supporting this project, whether through partnerships, donations, by volunteering, bringing the Water Bar pop-up to your event, or in other intangible ways. We're grateful for the help and encouragement, and can't wait invite you all to sit down for a drink.
In 2014 we had the opportunity to design and build a full Water Bar for an art exhibition at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. You can read a little more about the project on the Upstream Matters blog.
Since that show closed in January 2015, the Water Bar has lived in the Illinois River Watershed Partnership's watershed learning center. Thanks to IRWP's care, the project is still in tact, and today we're headed to Arkansas to pick it up. Next week, it will be installed in the new storefront space on Central Avenue, and we'll begin hosting Water Bar events for our SIP fund supporters.
Thanks to everyone who has given to our fundraiser (link here), you've made it possible for us to be able to go retrieve this project and to bring it back to Minneapolis so we can get started with our work in the new Water Bar & Public Studio space.
Students at Anoka-Ramsey Community College try blind tastings of three local tap waters and learn about the sources of each one at a pop-up Water Bar on 3/23/16
Nana, a student at Anoka-Ramsey Community College, serves water to other students at a pop-up Water Bar on 3/23/16
Shelby and Samara, students at Anoka-Ramsey Community College, serve water to other students at a pop-up Water Bar on 3/23/16
Today we had a lot of fun bringing the Water Bar pop-up to Anoka-Ramsey Community College in Coon Rapids, Minnesota. This pop-up was a partnership with the college's art department. Students got a chance to hop behind the bar to serve local tap waters to their own community, and to talk about issues related to water on and off campus. They also had little fun offering blind tastings to see who could tell which water was the Coon Rapids tap water they drink on campus every day.
Thank you to Anoka-Ramsey Community College, the students & faculty who worked on this pop-up with us, and everyone who stopped by to visit!
We'll be back there next Wednesday to sit on a panel with other artists talking about ways that art and design can engage social and environmental issues. Check our calendar to see where the Water Bar pop-up is headed next.
