Racing Magpie first started as a concept by Peter Strong and his wife Mary Bordeaux, they wanted to use their strong expertise in Native arts to strengthen the community and the art world by providing a wide variety of resources to artists, collectors, and everything in between.
After 5 years of being at the Old Aby’s Feed and Seed in Downtown Rapid City, they decided to say farewell to that location.
Many artists, musicians, and events have passed through Racing Magpie over the years and although they may have closed the doors on their current location, but founders Strong and Bordeaux aren’t going anywhere.
Like many businesses during the pandemic, they had to get creative in how they operated Racing Magpie as their creative space and a place of gathering. According to Strong, Racing Magpie isn’t just about location.
“We had several people say…’like once we got into it and we know what Racing Magpie is and what you're doing, the, the actual location isn't as important because it's about people and it's about community and it's about the creation of art.’”
During 2020 they continued to support the arts by creating a bigger digital footprint of resources such as lectures, virtual residencies, and wellness lectures. According to Bordeaux, this time also gave them an opportunity to reflect.
“This is really giving us the time to kind of pause and focus on programming, the online programming that we are doing, like the Winter Camp virtual series but also to just release things through and make like, make a more informed decision about how we move forward in terms of space. But our plan is to have another space sometime this year.”
Racing Magpie will continue to support the community of artists, and projects and programs like The Winter Camp Series. This now virtual project reimagines the historic Lakota Winter Camp of problem-solving and how the Lakota interacted with the Universe with lectures on how these philosophies can be used to solve modern issues.
-Contact SDPB’s Richard Two Bulls by email.