Chill Out: Festival launch party
Wed, Jan 25, 6-9 pm
Surly Brewing Beer Garden (outside)
Registration is free. Click the above button to register and pre-purchase tickets for drinks and sauna. Food will be available onsite (credit card only).
Join us to kick off The Great Northern 2023 with a "festival eve" outdoor winter village at Surly Brewing’s Beer Garden. The outdoor event will offer a dynamic set by DJ Yasmeenah and a participatory sing-along with Minnesota Public Radio’s Bring The Sing. Enjoy mouthwatering beverages and food from Vikre Distillery, Surly Brewing, Earl Giles, Caribou Coffee, and Scenic 61 by New Scenic Café, and Sioux Chef Catering, and wander the space to take in art projections by Montréal-based studio Iregular and installation art by Aaron Dysart commissioned by Green Minneapolis and Mississippi Watershed Management Organization. Bask in a Stokeyard Outfitters saunas or hot tub, tour an Xcel Energy tiny house, check out Polestar’s electric vehicles, play fashion bingo with Minnesota-based reseller Noihsaf Bazaar, and enter to win cash with FutureCard. Get a taste of what's to come for The Great Northern 2023 and beyond—invite your friends and celebrate the North with us!
Pre-purchase tickets for access to drinks and sauna sessions!
Tickets can be purchased ahead of time and used interchangeably for the following items:
Caribou coffee beverage, Surly beer, and mocktails = 1 ticket
Specialty cocktails = 2 tickets
20-minute sauna trial = 3 tickets
Please note: While you can pre-purchase tickets that can be used for a sauna session, please know that sessions are first come, first served and can only be booked on-site. There are a limited number of spots, so get there early to sign up! Release forms must be signed on-site before entering the sauna.
Green travel made easy!
Metro Transit is offering free rides on bus and METRO lines in partnership with The Great Northern Wed, Jan 25, from 5-9 pm. Download your pass.
One-way trips around the Twin Cities are easy with Evie. Drive Evie one way and take Metro Transit the other. Join Evie for $1 and get a $25 Drive Credit ($50 value) towards your first one-way trip(s) to get you around The Great Northern Festival with promo code “GreatNorthern0125” now through February 5, 2023. Join via Evie Carshare App or at EvieCarshare.com
Beverage offerings
“Snowbird” by Vikre Distillery: Voyageur Aquavit, Honor Brand Hay & Sunshine Whiskey, Amaro Superiore, Roasted Pineapple Syrup, Lime Juice, Absinthe
Vikre Distillery canned cocktails: Frenchie, Briar, and Velo
“coSNOWpolitan” (non-alcoholic) by Earl Giles: On the Fly Cranberries, Hibiscus Elixir, Bittercube Orange Bitters, Silvered Lime Disco Citrus
Surly Brewing beer: Furious, Logic Bomb, Hell, and One Man Mosh Pit
Caribou Coffee: Campfire Mocha, latte, coffee, hot chocolate, chai
Food offerings
Food will be available for purchase onsite. Credit card only.
Scenic 61 by New Scenic Café:
Hunter's Stew (with meat, $7)
Potato Leek Soup (no meat, $7)
Potato sausage served with caraway rye bun, rutabaga yukon gold puree, lingonberries, cucumber relish, buttermilk mustard seed ($15)
Cardamom bread loaves ($8)
Bags of Cardamom Shortbread, Ginger Molasses & Thumbprint cookies ($6)
The Sioux Chef Catering
Vegan Pozole: A take on a traditional pozole stew, but made vegan—with dried peppers, vegetables, hominy, and mushrooms. ($11)
Beef Stew, served in a demi boule ($10)
Roasted Corn Chowder, served in a demi boule ($10)
About the event activations and participants:
The ethereal and joyous Yasmeenah is a DJ and multidisciplinary artist who is not afraid to reflect on the times while prioritizing joy and celebration on the continuous path to liberation. Yasmeenah lives and examines the intersections of art, music, creation, queerness, and Blackness as she believes art is essential to radical movements.
Minnesota Public Radio’s Bring The Sing is a community sing-along celebrating music’s power to inspire and create connections between us. Sing song selections alongside your neighbors and fellow music-lovers—with special guests Jevetta Steele, Jearlyn Steele, and Kith + Kin Chorus. No matter your ability, all voices are welcome at this free, fun celebration of wintertime and community.
Founded in Montreal in 2010, digital art studio Iregular creates audiovisual installations, large-scale sculptures, architectural projections and scenographies, with a focus on interactive and immersive experiences. At the crossroads between art and technology, these artworks experiment with geometry, light, sound, typography, mathematics, algorithms, communication protocols, AI, and machine learning. Iregular also develops its own proprietary technologies. Catch their four-part installation of Our Common Home in Lowertown, Saint Paul, during the run of the festival.
Aaron Dysart is a sculptor fascinated with the intersection of human existence and wilderness. Often seen as adversarial or framed in terms of stewardship, implied distinctions in this intersection prove to be as permeable and fluid as they are compelling. This fascination is filtered through a study of objects and materials, interventions, and spectacle, and is always driven by the desire to gain understanding as a small part of an all-engulfing system. He has shown nationally and partnered with organizations including the National Park Service, Army Corp of Engineers, Mississippi Park Connection, and Woodwell Climate Research Center. His work has been in publications such as Art in America, Hyperallergic, Berlin Art Link and he has received grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board, Forecast Public Art, the Knight Foundation among others. Aaron is currently St. Paul’s Artist in Residence through Public Art Saint Paul and operates his studio practice in Minneapolis Minnesota.
Stokeyard Outfitters provides services that deliver authentic Sauna experiences virtually anywhere, from wellness programming at venues like the Hewing Hotel, to mobile sauna rentals throughout the Twin Cities Metro. As the science catches up to the well known health benefits of Thermaculture, and the popularity grows, Stokeyard Outfitters rolls ahead bringing magical Sauna experiences your way.
From Duluth, MN, Scott Graden and the team from the New Scenic Café bring you ‘Scenic 61’—a mobile kitchen inside a vintage Airstream serving the Duluth area and beyond. They cook up street food inspired by everything that they love: good food, good people, a little bit of wildness and the crash of rock and shore that they call 'Scenic 61.' No matter the menu, no matter the venue, they bring care for detail and love of food that has made the New Scenic Café a part of the Duluth community for over twenty-two years.
