Cold hands, warm hearts: Great Northern heats up Minnesota winters

Art and music exhibitions, film screenings, climate change conversations and sauna sessions will be part of the eighth-annual Great Northern Festival. The festival begins Thursday at Malcolm Yards in Minneapolis and runs until Feb. 2.

Kate Nordstrum, chief programming officer, said the mix of topics and mediums is part of this festival’s mission. “We feel like a festival that celebrates our unique winter culture needs to acknowledge that our winters are changing, and we are adapting as a festival and as a people,” she said.

The Great Northern Festival is about bringing people together during Minnesota winters, which can be an isolating time for many. The goal is to offer opportunities to get outside and be in a community.

The 10-day festival involves Minnesota-based and non-local artists. Nordstrum said that 82 Minnesota artists, speakers, chefs and other creative talent will be featured in the 2025 festival.

“We ask Minnesota artists to use the Great Northern as a platform for big ideas that can launch here and that we can help them export,” Nordstrum said. For artists from beyond the state, Nordstrum said the festival can be a platform for them to be introduced to the community.

Great Northern at launch

For the launch on Jan. 23 at Malcolm Yards, there will be free food on a first-come first-serve basis provided by Wrecktangle Pizza, as well as a signature s’mores-themed cocktail. Admission to the event is free, but they require you to RSVP to secure your spot.

The event will be emceed by The Current’s Zach McCormick, who will offer a Prince-inspired tracklist to begin an outdoor showing of the Minnesota artist’s “Sign O’ The Times” concert film. This will be projected onto the United Crushers building at 7 p.m.

The Malcolm Yards parking lot has been temporarily repurposed to house 22 saunas providing steaming sessions over the 10-day festival. Sauna-seekers can purchase tickets separately.

In partnership with Melanin in Motion, there will also be a special BIPOC Community Steam hosted on Saturday at 6:30 p.m. that is focused on incorporating wellness and respite, as sauna-goers embrace the steamy warmth and wintery cold.

Other sauna events hosted by the “saunapreneurs,” as Nordstrum refers to sauna innovators, include a forest bathing paired with a sauna session, 5K with Fleet Feet followed by the sauna, a library sauna in partnership with Milkweed Publishing and an art sauna brought by Art Spin.

“I love how what we started three years ago with the sauna village is evolving to really be a fuller reflection of our culture and what the festival loves,” Nordstrum said.

The celebration continues with the Minnesota debut of Jeremy Dutcher at Icehouse on Friday, Jan. 24 at 7 p.m. A two-spirit artist from the Tobique First Nation in Canada, Dutcher has become internationally renowned for his genre-blended neoclassical, jazz and pop music. He’s dedicated to language revitalization in his work which combines Wolastoqey, English and French.

Then on Saturday, the first of two Family Days will be held at 10:30 a.m. Family-friendly sauna sessions will be held with lowered temperatures, as well as tap water sampling and free outdoor games.

Here is the tea

There will also be a block-party-style celebration of a public art installation by Twin Cities-based artist Eric Rieger, also known as HOTTEA, a name inspired by a memory of his mother who always ordered hot tea. The HOTTEA project is about love and bringing people from different backgrounds together, said Rieger.

Rieger’s festival piece, called “Stories,” is inspired by conversations he had with community members who live or work along East Lake Street.

“I really want to try and stay true to where HOTTEA started,” Rieger said. “I really wanted to collaborate with the community and hear their stories and highlight the community itself.”

The piece incorporates yarn dipped in resin, a concept Rieger has been toying with for years. The resin creates a more permanent exhibit that weathers the elements. It moves in unison in the wind, something that Rieger describes as looking like a sea anemone.

Watch HOTTEA’s art installation with The Great Northern Festival, video courtesy of HOTTEA:

This 40-by-40-foot, site-specific installation includes an estimated 9,000 strands of 11 colors, all UV black light responsive. Rieger said he was interested in making the piece a dynamic experience any time of the day.

“They’re translucent, but they still have color, and the sun travels through them, but then they glisten,” Rieger said. “Then at night, we have black light and other lighting that activates the neon.”

Rieger and his team have been working on the piece for months, including record-breakingly cold days.

“I feel like the sense of wanting to create something beautiful for the community and for myself and for all the people that are involved just kind of took over,” Rieger said. “To be asked to be part of the Great Northern festival, I definitely feel like I’m being accepted and it feels really great to just be asked to present my artwork for the Twin Cities.”

Hear him speak about his piece with DJ Walter “Q Bear” Banks of 89.9 FM KMOJ Radio at 5 p.m. Saturday at 730 East Lake St.

The Great Northern Climate Solutions Series is hosting conversations over the weekend with climate activists, artists and business leaders as we address climate change and environmental concerns. Tickets for these sessions are sold out, but standby tickets are available. 

MPR News meteorologists Sven Sundgaard, Paul Huttner and Mandy Thalhuber will staff an Ask the Meteorologist Booth to answer weather-related questions.

See the whole list of events at The Great Northern Festival.

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