Cedar - Riverside/West Bank : Innovation + Job News

Even if you’ve never been to the Big Apple, you’ve probably heard of Humans of New York — the wildly successful, ongoing photo essay that’s touched more than 20 countries and earned millions of social shares.
 
New York City has more than eight million inhabitants from all over the world, but it’s not the only place with a multitude of human-scale stories worth sharing. MSP has its very own analog: Humans of Minneapolis, Minneapolis-based photographer Stephanie Glaros’ often poignant look at the joys, sorrows and oddities of life in the urban North.
 
Glaros started Humans of Minneapolis as an occasional tumblr blog — a useful vehicle for her ample interactive talents. She’s since added a Facebook page and Instagram feed to bring her subjects to a wider audience. Last month, the Minneapolis Parks Foundation announced that Glaros would conduct a “summer-long portrait series profiling visitors to Minneapolis neighborhood parks,” showcased in Humans of Minneapolis’ digital ecosystem and the Park Foundation’s own social properties.
 
According to the Parks Foundation, Glaros will profile 15 park visitors in all. The portrait series aims to draw attention to Minneapolis’ 160-plus parks, which (per the Parks Foundation) attracted more than six million visitors last year. Shortly after the portrait series’ announcement, the Trust for Public Land announced that Minneapolis had once again earned the top spot in its closely watched urban U.S. park system rankings, continuing a dominant run that dates back to the early 2010s.
 
“Stephanie’s series will help us begin to tell the stories of the people who use our parks every day and show the multitude of ways people use and love our Minneapolis parks,” the Parks Foundation said in a release.
 
Some of the stories Glaros captures on the Humans of Minneapolis blog are challenging, to put it mildly. Interviews conducted immediately following Prince’s death were heartbreaking. More recently, she spoke with a young man whose ex-girlfriend’s brother had died violently the previous week; in the interview, he talked openly about his own mortality and agonized about carrying a firearm for protection.
 
It’s not yet clear whether Glaros’ park stories will hew toward the weighty, or whether they’ll focus on the lighter side of summer in MSP. No matter what the next few months bring, Glaros is excited to explore her beloved, snow-less home city and forge new connections with her fellow Minneapolitans.
 
“People are reserved here and they don’t want attention, so it can be a bit of a challenge to draw people out,” she told the Star Tribune in April. “I look at that as a challenge to get real and get outside of our shells and make a connection…[t]here’s something magical about connecting with a complete stranger.”
 
 

Barely six months after its launch, Minneapolis women’s health startup Ova Woman is taking the reins as a national thought leader on issues routinely — and entirely without justification — dismissed as taboo.
 
Elise Maxwell, Ova Woman founder and CEO (and full-time Carlson School of Management MBA student), calls Ova Woman “the [country’s] only comprehensive, puberty-to-post-menopause women’s health e-commerce community.”
 
Maxwell is funding Ova Woman with the proceeds from two entrepreneurship competitions — $5,000 from the 2015 Acara Challenge and $31,000 from the 2015 MN Cup — and a $5,000 Sands Fellowship grant. According to remarks at October’s Minnesota Venture Conference, she’s targeting a $500,000 raise by June of 2016 and $1.6 million by the end of 2017.
 
Ova Woman publishes a lively mix of frank, useful content through four professional, if not always polished, channels: the Ova Vlog, a video blog usually featuring Maxwell and at least one friend or colleague; Your Questions, Our Answers, an in-depth question-and-answer resource with input from clinicians; Ova Stories, a long-form content portal; and The Speculum podcast, which “explores different intimate health issues,” says Maxwell.
 
Ova Woman is unsparing in its treatment of taboo topics. The inaugural Speculum podcast, for instance, devotes more than 20 minutes to the topic of douching; the second gives similar play to genital exams and anatomical awareness.
 
Maxwell wants to turn Ova Woman into an authoritative resource for fact-based information about women’s health, including potentially embarrassing issues that many refrain from discussing in public.
 
When it comes to women’s health issues, “[t]rust shouldn’t just mean a medical practitioner’s voice,” says Maxwell. “Other women’s opinions and experiences are valuable as well.”
 
Maxwell stresses that Ova Woman’s content isn’t meant to replace or counterbalance clinical advice. In the short term, her aim is to create a friendly, useful portal that offers actionable advice: a crowd-sourced alternative to WebMD.
 
Ova Woman’s longer-term plan — and the reason for its ambitious fundraising goal — is to build out a comprehensive retail platform with common and lesser-known products for a wide range of women’s health needs. There’s a huge market to reach: More than 100 million U.S. women experience incontinence, painful intercourse or period leaks, according to Ova Woman.
 
Ova Woman won’t manufacture its own products, at least to start. Instead, Maxwell plans to aggregate the best women’s health gear on the market for sale on its website, along with detailed, unbiased educational material, reviews and testimonials culled from a growing network of Ova Woman product testers: a cross between Amazon and Consumer Reports, with a laser focus on women’s health.
 
If Ova Woman’s retailing efforts are successful, says Maxwell, the company may launch its own white label — literally stamping its seal of approval on the best women’s health products available.
 

The U of M’s Carlson School of Business hosted its annual Tech Cities conference on March 27. The event drew hundreds of local innovators, investors and social entrepreneurs to the West Bank on the University of Minnesota campus in search of answers to a simple but vexing question: “How can we strengthen and promote MSP as a source for tech leadership, talent and innovation?”
 
The packed “Supporting Innovators in the Tech Cities” workshop offered a glimpse of the problems the region faces — and offered hope that workable solutions are within reach.
 
According to Matt Lewis, Greater MSP Strategy Manager and workshop moderator, MSP could produce “tens of thousands of jobs by 2020” that the region currently lacks the talent to fill. This “talent gap” is mostly due to two structural forces.
 
First, the accelerating pace of technological change is dramatically reordering the economy, rewarding highly skilled professionals and tech-savvy innovators while challenging those who don’t acquire new, relevant skills. This shift is happening everywhere, but it’s more pronounced in regional hubs like MSP (i.e., the capital of the North), where much of the tech economy’s most exciting, cutting-edge advances are forged.
 
The second structural force is unique to MSP: Despite a strong economy, reasonable living costs and excellent quality-of-life metrics, the region perennially struggles to attract the country’s — and world’s — best and brightest. The upside is that once transplants find their way here, they tend to stick around.
 
“The cliche that it’s hard to get people to come here and even harder to get them to leave holds true,” Lewis noted at the workshop. “We need to change the conversation and make [MSP] a global destination for people who self-identify as innovators.” Doing so would solve both problems: the technological talent gap and MSP’s “attraction issue.”
 
Four self-identified innovators who already call MSP home piped up to offer their ideas. Scott Cole, co-founder of the local tech cooperative Collectivity, proposed a “comprehensive tech accelerator” that would combine and magnify the efforts of existing local initiatives like the Minnesota High Tech Association, Greater MSP, MN Cup, university-based tech groups and others. The ultimate goal: to create a pervasive culture of innovation wherein cash-strapped innovators with great ideas effortlessly connect with investors, mentors and customers.
 
Melissa Kjolsing, MN Cup director, highlighted the tech world’s persistent gender gap — an issue that has gotten plenty of press in MSP and elsewhere. She noted that while women run 30 percent of all U.S. companies, most are solo operators. The solution: “deeper peer networks for women,” she argued. Women entrepreneurs need positive role models, namely successful female business owners who have made it through the male-dominated startup gauntlet. 
 
Kjolsing noted that though MN Cup has yet to achieve parity, the prestigious tech competition is spearheading the drive to empower women entrepreneurs: In 2014, about one-third of MN Cup entries came from all-women teams, up from 25 percent the previous year; 45 percent of 2014’s teams had at least one woman on the roster.
 
Lee George of the James J. Hill Reference Library argued that MSP must do more to support ambitious people at the two biggest “pinch points”: the moment when the entrepreneur moves from tinkering with an idea in their spare time to quitting their day job and fully plunging into their startup; and the exit strategy, or the point at which the entrepreneur steps away from the company he or she founded to focus on a new project or simply “cash out.”
 
Without support from mentors, investors and talented employees, many entrepreneurs never make it past the first pinch point, and their dream either dies or goes into a long slumber. Meanwhile, those fortunate enough to be able to contemplate an exit strategy often don’t know how to forge the connections with leaders of the established firms that typically buy up successful startups. It’s worth noting, for instance, that though MSP has a deep bench of Fortune 500 firms capable of financing numerous buyouts, one of the region’s most successful startups — SmartThings — turned to a Korean firm (Samsung) for its exit.
 
George advised existing organizations like Greater MSP and MHTA to adjust their programming in two ways: creating better and more numerous mentorship opportunities for soon-to-be-full-time entrepreneurs, and deepening connections between successful startups and major firms.
 
David Berglund, the fourth speaker, exemplifies the power of connections between MSP’s startup community and established business players. He’s UnitedHealth’s “entrepreneur in residence” and co-founder of Hoodstarter, a real-estate crowdfunding app. At UnitedHealth, he’s more or less in charge of “building healthcare startups from the ground up.”
 
“We need to accelerate the pace of innovation in large, sometimes bureaucratic corporations,” he said. “To do that, we need to get off the corporate campus and out of our comfort zone.”
 
Berglund believes that MSP’s major corporations need to communicate better and experiment more, both with one another and with the region’s entrepreneurs. Knowledge — and knowledge sharing — is power, after all. Berglund’s dream: an MSP in which big companies, successful small businesses and fledgling startups “forge partnerships and come together without fear of stealing each other’s ideas.” Such an outcome could accelerate the pace of business formation here and transform MSP into a truly global innovation hub.
 
 

The Knight Foundation recently announced 42 winners of its first-ever St. Paul Knight Arts Challenge. The challenge tasked applicants with answering this question: “What’s your best idea for the arts in St. Paul?” The grants, totaling nearly $1.4 million, recognize creative initiatives from the Far East Side to St. Anthony Park.
 
In addition to providing their best ideas for the arts in St. Paul, the Knight Foundation requires successful applicants to demonstrate that that project will either “take place in or benefit St. Paul,” according to a release from the foundation. And each applicant must find funds to match the Knight Foundation’s awards. Some of notable winners include:
 
The “Smallest Museum in St. Paul,” $5,000
A project of almost-open WorkHorse Coffee Shop, in the Creative Enterprise Zone in St. Anthony Park, the “Smallest Museum in St. Paul” will be really, really small—a vintage fire-hose cabinet that couldn’t even hold a Labrador retriever. The museum will host rotating collections of artifacts, art and memorabilia from the neighborhood’s vibrant creative and academic communities. The first exhibit is scheduled for June. Future exhibits must follow three simple rules: celebrate local themes or history, engage the coffee shop’s patrons, and avoid high-value, theft-prone artifacts.
 
Fresh Traditions Fashion Show, $35,000
The Center for Hmong Arts and Talent won a sizable grant to expand its Fresh Traditions Fashion Show, the Twin Cities’ “only culturally inspired fashion event that exhibits the creativity, originality and quality of work by Hmong designers,” according to the Knight Foundation. At the show, designers must incorporate five traditional Hmong fabrics into clothing that hews to contemporary fashion. Part of the Knight Foundation grant will be set aside for career support and skills-building classes for individual designers.

Radio Novelas on the East Side, $50,000
Nuestro Pueblo San Pablo Productions, led by Barry Madore, will use its Knight award to produce a series of 20 fictional radio novelas that celebrate the history and culture of the East Side’s Latino community. Madore plans to promote the series with three live shows at yet-to-be-named venues around the district. Like Fresh Traditions Fashion Show designers, participating performers can count on support and training from Madore and his partners.
 
Paleo-osteological Bike Rack, $40,000
Artist and paleo-osteological interpreter Michael Bahl has plans to fabricate the bronze skeleton of a large dinosaur-like animal in repose, with its ribcage functioning as a bike rack. That bony crest on its skull? A bike helmet. The work focuses on how prehistoric skeletons, which are obsessed over by scientists and fossil hunters around the world—can also be viewed as works of art. “When the individual bones are joined in a united effort, a skeleton becomes the ultimate functioning mechanism, or in this case, a whimsical bike rack,” according to Knight’s website.

Twin Cities Jazz Festival, $125,000
More established organizations got a slice of the pie, too. The largest single grant went to the Twin Cities Jazz Festival. The annual festival already draws more than 30,000 attendees, but organizers wanted to add more stage space and spring for better-known headliners. Performers have yet to be announced for next year’s event, in June, but executive director Steve Heckler is considering a move to the brand-new St. Paul Saints stadium, in the heart of Lowertown. That would create more seating space and facilitate pedestrian traffic from the Green Line stop at Union Depot.
 
The St. Paul Knight Arts Challenge will continue through 2016, with two more rounds of awards. All told, the foundation has earmarked $4.5 million to fund creative ideas, plus another $3.5 million for five established St. Paul arts institutions: Springboard for the Arts, Penumbra Theater, TU Dance, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and The Arts Partnership. St. Paul is just the fourth city to participate in the Knight Arts Challenge, after Miami, Detroit and Philadelphia.
 

Mathew Janczewski’s ARENA DANCES recently previewed its upcoming “Main St. Project” at a well-attended event in the patio space between the Marriott Courtyard Minneapolis Downtown and Town Hall Brewery. The event, called “Main St. Project: A Photography Unveiling,” included work from three Twin Cities’ photographers: Keri Pickett, Jack Armour and Wing Young Huie.
 
Their images of urban and small-town landscapes that have changed as a result of economic forces like suburbanization, big box retail and de-industrialization were projected on the brick exterior wall of the Southern Theater, where the multi-media performance “Main St. Project: The Evolution of Main Street: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” will run October 2-5. Performers from ARENA DANCES animated the imagery, which also included faces from Twin Cities' communities.
 
Following the show, some of the photographs were also projected onto the broad sides of buildings in the surrounding area, including the silos near the Guthrie Theater. Minneapolis Art on Wheels handled this aspect of the project.
 
The photographs will be incorporated into the October dance performance, as well. "When Mathew approached me to be a part of [his “Main St. Project”], I combed through my archives of photographs taken over 35 years," Huie says, "and selected 20 photos from about six different projects that I thought reflected a broad range of socio-economic and cultural realities in Minnesota."
 
According to ARENA DANCES, “Main St. Project” aims to answer a simple question: Does “Main St.” still exist? The dance performance incorporates “visceral and explosive movement [and] electro/techno/pop music, folk-inspired songs, and projections of filmed interviews with people from diverse communities and backgrounds” in pursuit of the answer. The photos add context to the performance by portraying historic and contemporary "Main Sts.," neighborhood intersections and city centers in various states of repair.
 
"All of the photographers and photography provide a great perspective on what 'Main St.' means," says Janczewski. "We're asking the question, 'How can we have a neighborhood-oriented future?'"
 
For Janczewski, the “Main St. Project” is personal. He grew up in Round Lake, Illinois, between Chicago and Milwaukee. As a child, he remembers a vibrant, community-focused town with a bustling downtown. Today, the town's economic engine has shifted to generic office parks and big box stores on its outskirts—a transformation repeated in countless other American communities.
 
Janczewski also wrestles with modern themes of alienation. Though he lives in a condo building, he says, there isn't always a sense of common purpose and community in his own neighborhood. And he's inspired by MIT professor Sherry Turkle's work on "technological isolation"—stories about how, despite being more connected than ever before, we feel depressed or inadequate when we interact with others online.
 
The project incorporates participants from ARENA DANCES’ Intergenerational Residency Program, an ongoing outreach initiative that facilitates dialogue between members of discrete, age-specific communities. The residency connected local middle- and high-school kids with residents of senior living facilities, who told stories of growing up in close-knit small towns and neighborhoods—quintessential "Main St." experiences.
 
The show includes a dynamic interplay of multimedia elements. A preview video on ARENA DANCES’ website shows unadorned performers in states of apparent bliss and others marked by frenetic bursts of energy against a backdrop of scattered newspapers, forlorn images and jarring bursts of light. The performing company is comprised of six local dancers: Elise Erickson, Sarah Baumert, Kimmie Allen, Timmy Wagner, Blake Nellis and Dustin Haug.
 

On Tuesday, July 22, the West Bank's Southern Theater publicly launched its ARTshare program with a festive gathering at Town Hall Brewery. Beginning in January, ARTshare members will get full access to all 15 of the Southern's resident performance companies for $18 per month, with a minimum commitment of 12 months. Members can reserve seats at performances on a first-come, first-serve basis, with no additional fees or restrictions. The theater is also working on a set of members-only perks, to be announced later this year.

To start, the theater is making a total of 2,100 memberships available. The Southern is already well on its way to this goal: Barely two hours into the celebration, nearly 200 memberships sold online and at Town Hall. Once the cap is reached, membership will be closed until and unless executive director Damon Runnals and his team decide to add more capacity. Memberships help fund a three-year, $11,000 per year residency for each group. The Southern won't charge residents to rent the space, though they must shoulder their own production costs.

In a recent interview with MinnPost, Runnals acknowledged that ARTshare will bring live performance to the Southern Theater for the first time in more than three years. While this means that the space won't be available for rental or other functions for the foreseeable future, it will provide a platform for more than a dozen small, local dance or theater groups. To smooth the transition, Runnals plans to "[hold] meetings with the resident companies to talk and share best practices," according to the interview.

If the Town Hall-hosted event was any indication, the initiative should be successful. Eighty attendees filled the brewery's patio. Free beer and appetizers fueled a merry crowd, many of which were members of Southern's future resident companies. People in orange ARTshare T-shirts circulated through the crowd, speaking with attendees about the initiative and soliciting membership pledges. At 4:30 p.m., the brewery patio hosted three impromptu performances from future ARTshare resident companies.

Members can expect more of the same from ARTshare's nearly untested membership model. As he noted in the MinnPost interview, Runnals and his team didn't have another example to study. Two theaters in Chicago and the Pacific Northwest also offer limited numbers of unrestricted memberships, but they both double as production companies. As a "co-presentation" facility, says Runnals, the Southern is more like Northern Spark - "a platform for artists," who have lots of say over how the theater operates, not to mention its content.

Ramsey County’s successful Corridors 2 Careers pilot program—which connects economically disadvantaged residents of communities along the Green Line, including Frogtown, Summit-University and Cedar-Riverside, with workforce training resources and employers in the area—already has several notable successes.

According to the program’s exit report, more than 1,400 residents of Green Line neighborhoods participated in the initiative, and nearly 90 percent had no previous knowledge of workforce resources in the area. As a direct result of their participation, 65 local residents found gainful employment and an additional 47 enrolled in basic or continuing education classes.

The pilot project also encouraged local job applicants to obtain—and local employers to recognize—the ACT National Career Readiness Certificate, “a portable credential that demonstrates achievement and a certain level of workplace employability skills,” according to ACT. The public-private partnership between Ramsey County and Goodwill-Easter Seals will continue to push this certification.

Of the five-dozen employers that participated in the pilot project, more than half were unaware about local workforce development resources that connect prospective employees with willing employees in transit-served areas. At least eight hired Corridors 2 Careers participants.

Now, the project has blossomed into a larger partnership between Ramsey County Workforce Solutions, Ramsey County Workforce Investment Board and Goodwill-Easter Seals of Minnesota. At least nine workforce development organizations have already committed to support the partnership, which aims to increase the “alignment of workforce needs between the residents and employers” in the area, according to the press release announcing the partnership.

The Ramsey County Workforce Investment Board’s Alignment and Integration Committees will coordinate the activities of the participating organizations, including Goodwill-Easter Seals, which provides GED tutoring, job-specific skills training and job placement services to individuals who have been chronically unemployed, recently incarcerated, afflicted by homelessness, or who struggle with alcohol or chemical dependency.

Going forward, Corridors 2 Careers aims to connect at least 400 Green Line residents with job search assistance, and place at least 80 percent of those participants in entry-level jobs or job training programs. The goal is a “location-efficient economic development strategy” that encourages local employers to be more receptive to diverse residents’ cultural needs, refer rejected applicants to workforce development agencies, and create new, industry-specific employer clusters along the transit-dense Green Line.

With Goodwill-Easter Seals and the Ramsey County organizations acting as pillars for the initiative, local employers will be able to directly tap C2C for willing, well-trained workers, connecting unemployed residents who urgently need work and employers that require specific skill sets.

Got big plans for April 26? Lu Lippold, the local producer for One Day on Earth’s “One Day in the Twin Cities,” has a suggestion: Grab whatever video recording device you can—cameraphones included—and record the audio-visual pulse of your neighborhood.

On the final Saturday of April, the Twin Cities and 10 other U.S. metros will host the fourth installment of One Day on Earth’s celebration of film, culture, and all-around placemaking. Founded by Los Angeles-based film producers Kyle Ruddick and Brandon Litman, One Day on Earth (ODOE) has a “goal of creating a unique worldwide media event where thousands of participants would simultaneously film over a 24-hour period,” according to its website.

The first event took place on October 10, 2010 (10-10-10); 11-11-11 and 12-12-12 followed. ODOE skipped 2013, but its organizers weren’t about to wait until 2101 for their next shot. Instead, they selected a spring Saturday—both to accommodate amateur filmmakers with 9-to-5 jobs, and to give participants in the Northern Hemisphere longer daylight hours to work with—for a bigger, bolder, slightly revamped version of the event.

For the first time, participants get 10 questions to inspire their creativity and guide their storytelling, from “What is the best thing happening in your city today?” to “Who is your city not serving?” The goal is to create a multi-frame snapshot of “cities in progress,” one that doesn’t simply answer the who-what-where of the places it covers.

As One Day in the Twin Cities’ point person, Lippold supervises local filmmakers and pitched the project to dozens of partner organizations, including the Science Museum of Minnesota and Springboard for the Arts to visual media companies like Cinequipt and Vimeo. (The McKnight Foundation and the Central Corridor Funders Collaborative are the largest local sponsors.)

The upside? “[The event] is a great way to shine a light on all the hard work that our nonprofit community does,” says Lippold.

Lippold also works with a handful of local ambassadors, some of whom enjoy national acclaim. These include noted cinematographer Jeff Stonehouse, veteran documentarian Matt Ehling, and community-focused filmmaker D.A. Bullock. They’ll be contributing their talents—and stature—to One Day in the Twin Cities’ promotion and execution.

One Day in the Twin Cities could be seen well beyond Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Along with their counterparts from other participating cities, local filmmakers may see their work incorporated into a condensed, three-part series that Litman and Lichtbau will market to PBS affiliates around the country. No word on whether TPT will air the special, but TPT Rewire has agreed to publicize the event in the coming weeks.

The real stars of One Day in the Twin Cities, though, are its filmmakers. Even if you’ve never filmed anything in your life, says Lippold, you can contribute meaningful work. Thanks to an interactive map feature on ODOE’s main site, the work will visible to anyone who visits.

“If I were just starting out in video, I would see this as a huge opportunity,” says Lippold. Since all contributions are credited by name and location, each participant “instantly becomes a documentary filmmaker,” she adds.

Source: Lu Lippold
Writer: Brian Martucci

On April 5, the West Bank Business Association (WBBA) will host a full day of creative merrymaking for artists, business owners, and arts enthusiasts on the West Bank. The West Bank Arts Foundry (WBAF), as the event is known, aims to connect Twin Cities artists with local business owners and “create more opportunities for artistic endeavors on the West Bank,” according to its website.

The neighborhood has long been known as a hotbed of creativity, but West Bank Business Association director Jamie Schumacher sees an opportunity to double down. “The arts are so important to the West Bank’s history…and part of what makes us a great destination district,” she says. “I want to do everything I can to support the creative activity we have and help build more.”

The WBBA already supports local creative events like the West Bank Music Festival, but the district lacks an arts advocacy organization. As an advocate for all local businesses, including many creative enterprises, the WBBA is a natural catalyst to help grow the West Bank’s arts scene. Schumacher cites a glaring need to “recognize and help more of our musicians and artists” and connect them with “businesses [that] want to be more arts-friendly.”

Ultimately, the goal of the West Bank Arts Foundry—hopefully an ongoing one, if WBAF becomes an annual ritual—is to forge, and then build on, partnerships between local property owners and artists. With so many “great minds coming together to collaborate” at WBAF, says Schumacher, “I’m interested in seeing what creative solutions [can be found to solve] some of our area’s issues.”

Owners of temporarily vacant buildings might work with local muralists to keep their properties lively before new tenants move in, for instance. Installation artists might use their talents to help West Bank visitors explore or navigate the neighborhood.

Schumacher is well-suited to oversee WBAF. As an employee of Peace Coffee—and, later, as owner of Altered Esthetics, a nonprofit art studio—she learned the ins and outs of the nonprofit sector. Her tenure as boss of the WBBA, meanwhile, has reinforced the placemaking power of creative enterprise. “[The] arts help to make communities unique, vibrant, livable, and destination worthy,” she says. “The West Bank is a pretty fantastic example of that.”

WBAF will feature 15 (and counting) “breakout sessions.” Many—Budgeting & Accounting for Artists, Marketing for Artists & Events—offer practical advice for working artists. Others, like Underground Art and the Vibrant History of the West Bank/Rekindling the Guerrilla Art Spirit, are meant to be “inspirational and collaborative,” according to Schumacher. WBAF will also feature appearances from prominent artists, including Joan Vorderbruggen (recently featured in The Line), who will lead a discussion of street and storefront art called Popping Up in the West Bank.

“It’s going to be a fun day,” says Schumacher, “and a solid opportunity to increase art and creative activity on the West Bank, as well as be a good networking opportunity for artists and businesses.”

Source: Jamie Schumacher
Writer: Brian Martucci

Local, fresh produce will now be easier to obtain for people who use food stamps, thanks to an initiative that allows more farmers markets to accept EBT (electronic benefits transfer) cards.

The program is a coordinated effort among Hennepin County, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), and the City of Minneapolis. Launched last year with two markets, the program has been expanded this year as an incentive for people to shop at the markets and eat healthier foods.

Those participating in the program will receive "Market Bucks" coupons, which match the first $5 in EBT card purchases with an additional $5 in coupons. Participating farmers markets are Midtown, Minneapolis, Northeast, West Bank at Augsburg, West Bank at Brian Coyle Community Center, and West Broadway.

"Technically, it was actually complicated to put into place, because EBT is designed to work in retail settings, at places that have Internet access," says JoAnne Berkenkamp, Program Director for Local Foods at IATP. "We're pleased that so many people worked together to solve those issues and make this happen. Our hope is that we can craft a food system that works for everyone."

The program also benefits farmers, she adds, because it brings in more shoppers and encourages more purchasing. Last year, at Midtown Farmers Market--the first market in the Twin Cities to accept EBT cards--the number of people using EBT more than doubled over the previous year.

Berkenkamp notes that there are other markets and municipalities around the state trying to put a similar program in place, and she anticipates that the initiative will expand in the near future.

Source: JoAnne Berkenkamp, IATP
Writer: Elizabeth Millard