From our Executive Director and Board Chair

It is our honor to share with you the 2024 Forecast Public Art Report to the Community. This report celebrates the artists, partners, and supporters who made this year possible—and all of you who help create the conditions for public art to thrive in communities across Minnesota and the country.

Over the past year, we worked with more than 30 partners in communities from Bemidji to Bloomington, Somerville to Indianapolis. We led workshops, facilitated artist selection processes, developed citywide creative placemaking plans, curated public murals, and trained hundreds of artists and administrators. And we continued to prioritize the leadership and visibility of BIPOC, trans, Indigenous, immigrant, and rural artists—because these voices are essential to building the future we all deserve.

In 2024, we launched Minnesota’s first statewide Artist-in-Residence program across state parks and trails, supported a new cohort of public artists through our grant program, deepened our national reach through planning, artist-led engagement, and workforce development, and explored climate resilience through public art research in our Change Lab. We published FORWARD Issue 7 on Monuments & Memorials, sparking conversation on what a more just and inclusive commemorative landscape could look like. And, in response to the need for more inclusive monuments in the rural Midwest, our team launched Midwest Memory. This grant is supporting eight Midwest communities in creating, recontextualizing, and preserving monuments and memorials that honor important untold local histories and stories.

This report is a celebration—and a thank you. To our team, our board, our collaborators and community partners, and the donors and funders who sustain this work: we are grateful for your trust. You make it possible for Forecast to be bold, responsive, and rooted in purpose.

As we look ahead, we’re energized by the creativity and leadership of the artists we serve. Together, we are continuing to imagine what public art can be—and what it can make possible.

With Thanks,

Theresa Sweetland, Executive Director

and Dudley Voigt, Board Chair