Sara Sawicki

Springboard for the Arts' mission is to support artists with the tools to make a living and a life, and to build just and equitable communities full of meaning, joy, and connection. Springboard for the Arts is an economic and community development agency created by artists and for artists. Springboard exists to create reciprocal relationships between artists and communities. In our 26 years, we have served over 150,00 artists, with 24,117 artists served in the past year alone. The foundation of our work is our belief that artists are vital contributors to their communities. We are creative, entrepreneurial, and build cross-sector collaborations that help communities tap into the power of their artists. Our goal is to build a national support system for artists and last year we saw our programs replicated in 23 states. We are based in Saint Paul and Fergus Falls, Minnesota, which offers us both an urban and a rural context for our work. We operate with a sense of transformational possibility - we are excited by the possibilities and fundamentally believe that change is possible. "An innovative center of thought and action about the relationships between artists and the communities in which they live."​ -The Line