The publication Southeast Minnesota Scene, recently gave some much earned love to Winona’s Treedome Productions, in their piece, “Sticking Around: Winona’s Treedome Born out of Desire to Create Space for Local Art.”
Writer, Samantha Stetzer tells us the story of Treedome’s creation, from it’s roots five years ago as a collaborative group consisting of, “Winona State University students… poets, hip hop artists, filmmakers, writers, and local musicians, who met to create and work on their passion projects together,” to its present day as “leader in the Winona arts scene — promoting, hosting, and creating with artists across multiple platforms in southeastern Minnesota.”
Treedome co-founder and director Nathaniel Nelson said, “The biggest thing is southeastern Minnesota doesn’t have the same kind of support that Minneapolis and St. Paul have… There is this massive arts scene down here, but it is scattered. It doesn’t have institutional support. You have bubbles around different styles and organizations.” Nelson and his collaborators have been working to remedy this by offering a host of services, from booking shows, to recording tracks and video, to throwing festivals.
With their now annual event, “Shut Down 3rd Street” Treedome hopes to build on the success of their inaugural event of 2018 where more than 3,000 people swarmed Winona’s downtown for a fun-filled day of concerts, art, food trucks, and local shopping. Nelson said, “We wanted to make a party in the streets… [It] goes back to this same idea. How do we make music and art a collaborative community piece? How do we rally the community around art and now just make it a consumable item?”
Read the SE Minnesota Scene’s full article here