A hand working on a puppet.

Board of Directors (2023 - 2024)

  • Arwen Wilder (Co-Chair)
  • Peter Schulze (Co-Chair)
  • Phil Dumka (Secretary)
  • Joe Sullivan (Treasurer)
  • Mina Leierwood (member-at-large)
  • Pasha Milbrath (member-at-large)

2022 Statement of Intention

BareBones exists to present the Halloween Extravaganza. It is a vehicle for naming, mourning and honoring the dead, both the known and unknown, including the victims of neglect, police brutality and genocide. It is an event for collective grieving through community art as we enter the cold and dark time of the year. These things are desperately needed in 2022. As artists our tools are vision, manifestation, transformation.

Barebones, and each of us in the United States, exist within a history of theft, genocide, slavery and white-body supremacy. We live and work and make art in the context of systems which intentionally build inequity and division, and a context of massive brutality by those in power at every level which rips from us our humanity and our connection to our bodies and the earth. In recent years we have taken steps towards undoing white-body supremacy within BareBones, with an eye on Minneapolis and the larger culture. We promise to do more. Here, we continue the following action promises to be accountable to.

Removing barriers to participation: We will consider this as we make every decision about governance, hiring, location, cost, content and messaging.

More about hiring: This year, as we have for multiple years, we commit to hiring — especially to leadership positions — at least 50% people who are Black, Indigenous, people of color, transgender, queer, people with disabilities and women.

Learning/unlearning: This year we will again offer the following.

  1. for Black and Brown bodies: Black, Indigenous, people of of color only special event during the making of the show for social and artistic support
  2. for white bodies: “embodied white allies workshop” and
  3. for all bodies: community conversations around cultural appropriation and creating a culture of consent.
  4. for the directors: encouragement and the cost of attending B’Dote tour to understand the history and importance of the Hidden Falls Park site to the Dakota people.

Safety: We will again work with a community based security organization as a police-free alternative to keeping BareBones events safe. We have a “safer spaces” committee devoted to helping the BareBones community be welcoming to all who feel called to join and to helping with conflicts as they arise.

Permissions: We recognize that Hidden Falls is close to B’Dote, the confluence of the rivers and the Dakota holy site. We will not yet return to Hidden Falls Park, as we continue learning more about that long history and deepening and healing our relationships with the land and people. To this end, we encourage you to volunteer your time alongside other Barebones people with the Dakota Land Recovery Project.

We hope you will join us to make BareBones 2022 what this community needs it to be.

All photos on this page by Max Haynes