The Belfry Center and Bat Annex, a small, collectively run non-profit art + community space, sent out this in a recent MySpace bulletin:
Dear Members of the Community,
The current location of the Belfry & Bat Annex Library at 3753 Bloomington Ave is currently under duress by the city of Minneapolis. We have been ordered to cease nearly all all of our events because we do not have entertainment or food licenses. This means all of our music shows and Food Not Bombs are canceled at this specific location to avoid fines from the city. When we reached the office that issued our letter we were told that the zoning of our location makes getting those licenses for all intents and purposes impossible. They had a scanned copy of one of our fliers for the March Fest included in the letter and the representative was looking at our Myspace page while we asked for answers. The city of Minneapolis is surveilling our community’s actions and events and wants its coffers filled at the price of a collectively and rather simply run arts space and library. A space that thought (somewhat naively) that a 501-C3 wasn’t the only way to do this. A space whose building is far from being up to code but had cheap enough rent to be a relatively sustainable commodity in our community. This particular location is no longer right for our goals. The Belfry’s 3753 Bloomington Ave location will have to close. The search for a more fitting space is on and in the meantime our money-generating events are canceled, which means we need help tying up loose ends and making rent for the duration of our time at this address. So if you have ever been to a show at the Belfry, checked out a zine, danced till 4, had an event or meeting, looked at the art, or just hung out now is the time to chip in that extra $2 you didn’t want to donate the first time around. Benefit shows, volunteering, and donations at the events we will be able to have at this location will be so greatly appreciated by our small collective. This Saturday (tonight!) we will be having an closing party for Alex Kuno’s art show, The Miscreants of Tiny Town (see press release below), at 7 pm. We invite you all to come and have fun and we can talk about the future we envision for the Belfry as well as ways to better subvert the capitalistic and suffocating actions of our local government. Thank you for your support and keep your ears open for more updates on the future of the Belfry and the Bat Annex Library.
Love,
The Belfry
This is a perfect example of what people miss when they think about the role of the arts in the community. The arts are being squeezed out and sucked dry. These are places that would never even come up in a meeting on senate appropriations. The grass-roots arts scene is being bulldozed, not by cutting funding, but due to a larger problem.
Having a vibrant arts scene is not about making it happen. It’s about letting it happen. Mpls is power tripping on itself. The artists are going to leave. It’s becoming a shell. Minneapolis needs places like the Belfry in order for it to keep being what it thinks it is years from now. It doesn’t know that.
I go to the Walker and listen to MPR. But institutions like that do less to promote the actual development of the arts here than they do keep “cultured” people feeling smug about living here.