Kids Can Be Artists Too paint event at Wyoming Stagecoach Day

Our Stagecoach Was Robbed! - “Kids Can Be Artists Too” event at Stagecoach Days in Wyoming, MN September 17, 2022

Your neighborhood art center in Wyoming, MN needs help from kids at Stagecoach Days on Saturday, September 17 to replace a robbed stagecoach!

The Hallberg Center for the Arts, located at 5521 East Viking Boulevard in Wyoming, is creating a new stagecoach mural for their building as the original stagecoach was taken during building maintenance last month.

Every year at Stagecoach Days, the Wyoming Area Creative Arts Community (WACAC), whose home is The Hallberg Center for the Arts, invites kids of all ages to visit the WACAC tents and create their own painting to take home along with a free shirt. 

Beginning ten years ago, the volunteers of WACAC began supporting the local youth with this outreach program to promote the arts and let kids paint for free.  They provide kids with aprons and set up paint stations with canvases, easels, brushes and paint and the kids provide their imaginations and create a Stagecoach Day keepsake.   With sponsorship help from the First State Bank of Wyoming and grants from the East Central Regional Arts Council through the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, the volunteers helped thousands of children paint over the years with an average of over 500 painters at Stagecoach Days each year.

This year on Saturday, September 17, from 10am to 7pm is no different and kids of all ages are invited.  However, kids are also encouraged to lend their talents to be a part of a new, 8 ft. by 4 ft. stagecoach mural which will be mounted permanently upon completion at the Hallberg Center for the Arts.  Kids can be a part of history by adding to this mural after they create their own masterpiece!

The Wyoming Area Creative Arts Community started up 10 years ago with a small group of about 12 artists, writers, and musicians who envisioned an organization to help promote the arts throughout the northeast metro area.  The following year, this group incorporated as a non-profit, and the year after that, got their 501(c)(3) status with the IRS.

In 2015, with the help of a $100,000 donation by the Hallberg Family Foundation and major contributions by Rosenbauer, the First State Bank of Wyoming, and B&N Sheet Metal, as well as donations from other companies and individuals from across the county, the organization purchased an old church building in Wyoming, MN and established the Hallberg Center for the Arts.

Today, the art center has new exhibits each month.  Some collaborative, some duo or solo exhibits selected through an interview process.  Currently the Main and Cube Galleries of the Hallberg Center for the Arts are booked into January of 2024.  And, for the last five years, every other month, three songwriters are brought in to perform their own original music at the art center in Songwriters in the Round.

The Hallberg Center for the Arts is a member of the North American Reciprocal Museum Association (NARM) joining other organizations in a reciprocal member benefit sharing cooperative.  So, a NARM level membership with the Wyoming Area Creative Arts Community, will have reciprocal member benefits at the Walker Art Center, the Minneapolis Institute for Arts, and over 1000 galleries and museums across North America.

The Hallberg Center for the Arts is located at 5521 East Viking Blvd, Wyoming, MN  55092.  The art center hours are Tuesday through Friday from 2pm to 8pm and Saturdays from noon to 6pm.  Admission is free and open to the public.

For more information about the In. Art Show and the Wyoming Area Creative Arts Community, visit wyomingcreativearts.org.