Imagining the Avalon Theatre Cohort

The HOBT board has begun engaging the community around a vision of the Avalon Theatre as a community-held space for BIPOC and queer artists and interdisciplinary art forms. The HOBT Board of Directors seeks to share the Avalon Theatre as a cooperative physical space and is in a process of seeking out partnering arts organizations and artists for an Avalon Theatre Cohort.

Community art spaces are disappearing all over the Twin Cities, particularly art spaces that have been home to BIPOC artists, queer artists, and non-mainstream art forms. The current global pandemic has increased pressure on the arts sector, especially small and mid-sized arts organizations. We envision an Avalon Theatre Cohort, collectively and collaboratively, holding the physical space of the theatre on Lake Street as a shared community resource.

Ideally, we envision HOBT and the MayDay Council as stakeholders in a group of many community stakeholders acting as decisionmaking partners to carry the building forward as a community artspace.

The members of the cohort become the think tank for the Avalon Theatre, bringing together a group committed to seeing it meet community needs on Lake Street with our neighbors and in the greater arts community. The Cohort would commit dialogue and action toward transforming the physical space of the Avalon, filling the Avalon with programming, and reimagining the business model into sustainability.