Region 2 Arts Council awards $86,000 for arts access in Beltrami County

Beltrami County arts groups and schools are set to see the most immediate effects of $86,000 in new grants, with money going toward tuition cuts, student songwriting, public murals and downtown art that residents will actually see, hear and use.

The Region 2 Arts Council Board of Directors awarded the Arts and Cultural Heritage Funds on May 7 after a community panel reviewed 25 applications. Seventeen projects were funded across the council’s five-county region of Beltrami, Clearwater, Hubbard, Lake of the Woods and Mahnomen counties. Organizations were allowed to submit up to two proposals each.

The money is designed to do more than add performances to a calendar. Region 2 says its Arts Access grants support high-quality, accessible arts activities that reach wider audiences and remove barriers to participation, a goal that matters in communities where school, library and nonprofit budgets often have to cover basic services first. These grants can underwrite the pieces that are easiest to cut but hardest to replace: artist fees, tuition help, materials and public installation costs.

In Bemidji and Red Lake, several projects will touch young people directly. Red Lake Middle School received $6,000 for a seventh-grade songwriting, recording and music-video project with resident artists Lady Midnight and Dex Wolfe. Bemidji Performing Arts Academy received $6,000 to make the Bemidji Summer String Institute more affordable through tuition discounts. Headwaters Music & Arts in Bemidji received $6,000 for a one-week immersive string-music experience.

Other Bemidji projects are aimed at the public spaces people pass every day. Hope House received $4,520 for Indigenous artist Wesley May to help clients paint an eagle mural in its renovated drop-in and activity center. The Bemidji Downtown Alliance was awarded $5,880 for public art on five blue information kiosks downtown, turning utility fixtures into visible pieces of local art.

The grant round also reached beyond Bemidji. Heartland Arts’ Art Leap 2026, Lake of the Woods School Community Education’s free Musical Theater Camp in Baudette, Clearwater County Historical Society’s America’s 250th anniversary concert in Shevlin, Northern Light Opera Company’s NLOKids Theater Camp serving Pine Point and Park Rapids, and CREATE’s mixed-media, mosaics and beading workshops for disabled adults all received support.

The 2026 round was larger than the 2024 cycle, when Region 2 Arts Council awarded $80,000 after reviewing 24 applications and funding 18 projects. This year’s total rose to $86,000, a sign that demand for access-focused arts dollars is still climbing across north-central Minnesota.