Changing the message to ‘positive’ for the Northside; a great place to live, work and play
By: Staff 09/01/2006
Over the past few months, while the media has been blasting negative sound bites and headlines about North Minneapolis, they’ve been missing an incredible journey going on right in North Minneapolis: the work of the Northside Marketing Taskforce (NSMTF). The Northside Marketing Taskforce is an exciting, diverse group of folks from all over North Minneapolis. Concerned residents of all ages, business owners, neighborhood groups, agencies, potential partners, churches and others have begun a broad community dialogue to capture the community’s input about the positive messages of North Minneapolis and begun drafting a strategic plan to begin the work. “Its exciting to see so many people looking at this from a regional perspective and especially watching the youth eagerly rolling up their sleeves, contributing ideas, establishing relationships, and helping create the positive image and media makeover they want to see for North Minneapolis,” said Amy Luesebrink, Shingle Creek and Lind Bohanon Neighborhood Associations’ staff person.
Positive Perceptions (now a part of the NSMTF), is a small nonprofit group that had been working on this positive marketing approach and enlisted the aide of the NorthWay Community Trust to help convene and fund some of the broad outreach and initial strategic planning work. A Minneapolis based communications firm, Words on Fire, was hired to help facilitate the process of creating a strategic plan for getting out the message that North Minneapolis is a great place to live, work and play.
Six initial community input meetings have been held at PCYC, Minneapolis Urban League and NorthWay Community Trust offices involving over 300 participants since the beginning of 2006. More work remains to be done over the next few months to accomplish the initial mission of the taskforce, and the group is calling on interested community members and organizations to help and join in.
“Marketing is just one piece of the puzzle that will help create positive change for North Minneapolis” said Positive Perceptions representative Kurt Lawarason. “We realize this is just a starting point. We’re looking forward to working together to expose more of the positive stories and aspects about North Minneapolis because it really is a great place to live, work and play.”
To find out how you can help ‘change the message’ visit Positive Perceptions at www.northminneapolis.com/ and click on Contact Us, or contact Words On Fire at 612-928-7744 or NorthWay Community Trust at 612-521-4500.