Featured Stories

Paul with Northwest Architectural Salvage

Selby Avenue 2012: A Slide Show

Bill Kelley Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Saint Paul's Selby Avenue is the home of some celebrated and beloved local institutions. But for this issue, lensman Bill Kelley took portraits of Selby Avenue places that may be a bit below your radar unless you know the street well--plus some cool new businesses that have popped up in recent months. It's our effort to show how one of the Saintly City's most attractive, even genteel, streets is also one of its most dynamic and diverse.

Arts and Culture, Creative Economy, Design, diversity, Shopping, Strong Local Economy

Summit Hill and Crocus Hill, Thomas - Dale/Frogtown, Summit - University

Connecting two continents with teeshirts

Nancy Crotti Wednesday, April 11, 2012

The teeshirts bearing the brand Forgotten are articles of faith as well as articles of clothing. The fledgling company was created to help the Ugandan farmers and cotton spinners who create the shirts and the inner-city Minneapolis teens who screen-print them. Now a major rock tour is set to take Forgotten gear to a new level.

Arts and Culture, Coordination/Collaboration, Creative Economy, diversity, Entrepreneurship, Green Jobs, Philanthropy

Karen Washington tells local urban gardeners: to go permanent, get political

Susan Klemond Wednesday, April 04, 2012

What do you do when the urban garden you've struggled to create gets sold out from under you? At the recent Community Garden Spring Resource Fair, New York gardening advocate Karen Washington told local growers that if they want their gardens to be really sustainable--i.e., permanent--they'd better get savvy about the political system.

Coordination/Collaboration, diversity, Entrepreneurship, Green Jobs, Regionalism, Sustainability

West Side

Videoline: Dinkytown: Food, Music, and Books

Izak Leon and Adam Jacobs Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Izak Leon and Adam Jacobs' video "Dinkytown: Food Music Books" is a a lively look at the semi-legendary neighborhood of cafes, bars, clubs, and bookstores adjacent to the University of Minnesota campus. The two Perpich Center for Arts Education students portray a neighborhood that's moving toward the mainstream while still holding on to many of the values of its countercultural past.

Arts and Culture, diversity, Entrepreneurship, Higher Education, Shopping, Strong Local Economy

University

A Line or Two: Performance Extravaganza at Patrick's

Jon Spayde Wednesday, March 21, 2012

In A Line or Two, I share some of my discoveries and enthusiasms as I make my way around the Twin Cities--call it an editor's-note-as-blog-entry. This week, a cabaret showcase that will bring together some of the city's A-list avant-garde performers in what promise to be gorgeously twisted takes on our politico-sexual status quo.

Arts and Culture, Creative Leadership, diversity, Nightlife

Longfellow

Where the U of M and the Northside Meet

Dan Heilman Wednesday, March 14, 2012

When the economic downturn derailed plans for a U of M North Minneapolis campus, university and civic visionaries created a unique alternative: a Northside research and outreach center that's the hub for a whole galaxy of town-gown partnerships in economic development and social betterment.

Coordination/Collaboration, Creative Leadership, diversity, Entrepreneurship, Higher Education, Philanthropy, Strong Local Economy, Talent Dividend

North Side

Hennepin's History and Hennepin's Future

Camille LeFevre Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Native American trail, gaudy entertainment district, forge of gay consciousness, showcase of the arts: Minneapolis' Hennepin Avenue has been all of these and more. Recently, historians, urbanists, and the public gathered to explore the avenue's colorful history as part of the city's initiative to shape its future.

Affordable Housing, Arts and Culture, Coordination/Collaboration, Creative Economy, Creative Leadership, Design, diversity, Nightlife, Strong Local Economy, Transit Oriented Development, Transportation

Downtown

A Line or Two: Carlyle Brown's Double Premiere

Jon Spayde Wednesday, February 29, 2012

In A Line or Two, I share some of my discoveries and enthusiasms as I make my way around the Twin Cities--call it an editor's-note-as-blog-entry. This week: Carlyle Brown's American Family opens at Saint Paul's Park Square Theatre in mid-March. It's the nationally acclaimed, locally based playwright's first attempt to explore the black experience through a white central character. And it will also mark Brown's first appearance onstage at Park Square.

Arts and Culture, Creative Economy, diversity

Downtown/Lowertown

Videoline: The Muslim Experience in Minnesota

Islamic Resource Group of Minnesota Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Muslim Minnesotans range from immigrants to American-born men and women with Mideastern, African, or Asian ancestry to converts with a "Lake Wobegon" background. This film, produced by the Islamic Resource Group of Minnesota, puts very human and very recognizable faces on Minnesota's diverse and growing Muslim community.

Arts and Culture, diversity, Regionalism

A Line or Two: Back to Filfillah

Jon Spayde Wednesday, February 01, 2012

In A Line or Two, I'll be sharing some of my discoveries as I make my way around the Twin Cities--an intriguing upcoming event, a great restaurant meal, a new art gallery, a conversation with a forward thinker, or a web site you should know about. Call it an editor's-note-as-blog-entry. (And I take the photos--Bill Kelley is guiltless.) This time: a return to the marvelous, and still undiscovered, restaurant Filfillah, where you get the lunch your mom made for you if you grew up in Ankara.

Arts and Culture, diversity, Entrepreneurship

Kindred Kitchen serves up entrepreneurship in north minneapolis

Elizabeth Millard Wednesday, December 14, 2011

For hopeful food entrepreneurs, it can be a long, hard road from cooking a tasty treat to creating a viable business around it. That's where the North Side's innovative food-business incubator comes in.

Creative Leadership, diversity, Entrepreneurship, Strong Local Economy

North Side

Bruce Corrie Talks with Jon Spayde - Bill Kelley

The Big Picture 9: Bruce Corrie on the power of "ethnic capital"

Jon Spayde Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Often, says Concordia University economist and biz-school dean Bruce Corrie, our minority and immigrant communities are seen solely through the "problem" lens. Their struggles are real, but their contributions to our prosperity and potential for growth are greater than most majority Minnesotans realize. And Corrie's got the figures to prove it.

Arts and Culture, Coordination/Collaboration, Creative Economy, Creative Leadership, diversity, Entrepreneurship, Higher Education, Strong Local Economy, Talent Dividend

North End, Greater East Side, Dayton's Bluff, Central Avenue, Phillips, Midway, Cedar - Riverside/West Bank, West Side, Lake Street, North Side, Seward, Thomas - Dale/Frogtown, Payne - Phalen, Powderhorn, Summit - University

Behind the Bicycle Boom

Jay Walljasper Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Most of us in the Twin Cities are aware that we've become a great town for bicycling in recent years, but urbanist and author Jay Walljasper--an avid biker for decades--has been digging into the trend to find out the what and the why behind it. In this adaptation of an article he wrote for Bikes Belong, he fills in the story and gives us some impressive facts about the sheer scale and promise of our new two-wheel era.

Coordination/Collaboration, Creative Leadership, diversity, Strong Local Economy, Sustainability, Transportation

Riverfront/Mill District, Phillips, University, Macalester - Groveland, Cedar - Riverside/West Bank, Downtown, Lake Street, Southwest, North Side, Uptown/Lyn Lake, Seward, Nokomis, Longfellow, Calhoun - Isles, Powderhorn, Warehouse/North Loop, Northeast

My View: Minneapolis needs a mural arts program

Elissa Cedarleaf Dahl Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Muralist, public-school teacher, and MCAD professor Elissa Cedarleaf Dahl has a big idea for Minneapolis: a mural program that would engage at-risk kids, create beautiful public art all over the city, and celebrate our neighborhoods and the people who live in them.

Arts and Culture, Creative Economy, Creative Leadership, Design, diversity

North Side

The Big Picture 7: "The Achievement Gap is an Equity Gap"

Jon Spayde Wednesday, August 17, 2011

A conversation with Julia Freeman and Hillary Rodgers of the Organizing Apprenticeship Program. Through its Education Equity Organizing Collaborative, the OAP has entered into a pathbreaking partnership with the State of Minnesota. Its goal: close the widely publicized "achievement gap" by making sure equal treatment of all students is state policy.

Coordination/Collaboration, Creative Leadership, diversity, Regionalism

Seward

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