Minnesota Media Arts (MNMA), in partnership with St. Paul Neighborhood Network (SPNN), invites artists, educators, archivists, and community leaders to help preserve our audiovisual history. With support from the Minnesota Historical Society’s Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, we’re launching a series of Community Media Archiving Workshops — and your insight is essential to guiding this work.

Why this matters:

Minnesota’s cultural memory lives on aging formats like videotapes, cassettes, film reels, slides, and photographs. These materials are deteriorating, and without action, many could be lost forever. We’re committed to building community-driven solutions that protect these stories and ensure future generations can access them.

How to participate:

To help shape the project, we’re conducting an AV Media Preservation Survey. It asks about your media collection formats, how you care for them, any technical or funding challenges you face, and what kind of training or support would help. We’re also interested in your readiness to digitize and share content through new community platforms.

Estimated time: 10–15 minutes

Deadline: A big thank you to everyone who’s already filled out the survey! During our Aug. 1-Sept. 12 survey timeframe, we received over 50 responses, giving us a great starting point for our assessment. There’s still time to add your voice—surveys will be open through January 31, 2026, and possibly for the full length of the project, June 1, 2026. Please submit only one response per organization.

Note: If you don’t have all the answers, that’s okay! Complete the contact section and any questions you can — especially those about workshop interest scheduled for early 2026— and we’ll follow up.

Please use our Survey Invitation Form to express your interest in receiving an email link to complete online the AV Preservation Archiving Workshop survey. Your personal data is secure and will be used only to keep you informed about our archiving workshop development efforts.

If you would like to preview the survey first, here is a read-only PDF version

Your participation and input on these Community Media Archiving Workshops is essential. Thank you for helping us preserve the past for the future.

This program is a partnership between are Minnesota Media Arts (MNMA) and St. Paul Neighborhood Network (SPNN).

This program has been financed in part with funds provided by the State of Minnesota from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund through the Minnesota Historical Society.