North Side : Innovation + Job News

An organization’s name needs to reflect its mission. New Rules does exactly that. The North Minneapolis for-profit/non-profit hybrid merges community event center, coworking office space, retail and, eventually, a café. At its core, the multi-prong concept blends creative enterprise, social entrepreneurship and community engagement, with a focus on improving and connecting the immediate community near its home on Lowry Avenue.

New Rules seeks to meet the needs of artistic creatives and small businesses while giving back to the local community. “It started with my love for community building and visualizing resources,” says founder Chris Webley. In speaking with artists, he saw a connection between the artisans’ needs and those of other small businesses. While fleshing out the New Rules concept, he realized it naturally extended to the North Minneapolis community where he wished to set up shop.

“We’re looking at ways of engaging different audiences and having conversations to help,” he explains. “The idea is that everybody is doing something. I cut the check, do the heavy-lifting,” he admits, then artisans create products in the work space and then sell them to the community through the retail store. “Everybody has something to contribute…we’re trying to get people to rally behind that idea.”

The event space is open to the community now, whether that means a neighborhood gathering or an art exhibit. Webley hopes to add a café later, which will then feed the community as well.

“Our niche is creative occupations,” he says, but it’s not limited by that mission. New Rules is adaptive based on who can help and what services they can offer.

To cater to creative industries, Webley wired a state-of-the-art sound system, and is actively seeking funds and donations from local corporations for other high-end equipment such as a 3D printer. “I’m gung-ho on doing things the right way the first time around,” says Webley, emphasizing that high-end equipment establishes a sense of pride and professionalism that patchwork gear cannot. New Rules seeks to invest in the community and to give back, which is why he wants the best technology he can find. 

Webley purchased the building himself and has overseen renovations. Though the coworking spaces are open now and the retail shop is running in a pilot mode since October 15, he considers New Rules a work in progress. The idea is fully formed and he’s built it from the ground-up, but there is room to grow.

Tenants will come, he says. Currently, he continues, “It’s more about getting the right things that are going to enable us to have an impact.” As the creative businesses grow, so will the retail store and the overall entity’s ability to reach out to their neighbors.

“The biggest needs for a lot of our immediate neighbors are financial resources,” Webley continues. By emphasizing sustainable leadership and economic development through an adaptive format, New Rules can improve lives directly. “There are many examples I can give you where the underlying factor is not having traditional limitations on how you can help,” he explains, “but getting creative.” He cites an example from last summer, when the building lent its lawnmower to a local homeless couple, who used it to earn funds for food and shelter.

By truly engaging their neighbors and finding unique solutions, Webley wants to achieve far more than a high-tech workspace for small businesses. He sees New Rules as connecting workers and neighbors, forging bonds that go beyond vocation.

The New Rules event center will be buzzing this February in honor of Black History Month, serving as a launch pad for the fully integrated concept. The cowork space will be upgraded and the retail store remodeled. “We’re not going to have everything that we want in terms of amenities,” Webley admits. “But we’re continuing to trek toward things.”
 

A year ago, the Minneapolis Idea eXchange (MiX) launched its festival of ideas in downtown Minneapolis during a lively event in which innovators from throughout MSP inspired participants to think in fresh new ways about the initiatives proposed in the Minneapolis Downtown Council’s 2025 Plan. On Wednesday, October 12, MiX resumes with its 2016 program, “The Power of Ideas.” Networking begins at 4:30 p.m., with the program scheduled from 5-6 p.m. The event takes place at Brave New Workshop.
 
John Sweeney, owner of Brave New Workshop, is kicking off the event along with Elena Imaretska. The two co-wrote the recently published book The Innovative Mindset. “MiX is a program that recognizes MSP as a world-class wellspring of innovation and a place of ideas,” Sweeney says. “The premise of our book is that you choose your mindset during your every waking hour. We work on helping people take a very practical approach to cultivating and maintaining an innovative mindset, in order to use skills like brainstorming and methodologies like design thinking to solve challenges.”
 
Following Sweeney and Imaretska’s group exercise in finding an innovative mindset, Tom Fisher, director of the University of Minnesota’s Metropolitan Design Center and author of Designing Our Way to a Better World, will guide an introduction to design thinking and launch the workshop portion of the event. Other panelists scheduled to participate in the event include Sondra Samuels of Northside Achievement Zone and Peter Frosch of Greater MSP. 
 
Minneapolis is “working on a commitment to end homelessness by 2025, figuring out how bicyclists and pedestrians and cars can navigate our roads together, how we can have a more equitable distribution of graduation rates in high schools, how to make the arts more accessible for everyone—the list goes on and on,” Sweeney says. MiX was created, in part, to address and provide working solutions for such problems.
 
“I’m passionate about gathering together a group of people with many different points of view to generate opportunities for harvesting the creativity and innovation that already exist here,” adds Imaretska. “That’s the beauty of innovation: Who knows what spark of an idea may trigger something bigger.”
 
The event will include a service component: A new take on the idea of “happy hour,” during which participants will make sandwiches that will be distributed to the homeless. “By matching a sense of service with a culture of innovation, we hope powerful things will be happening," says Imaretska.
 
Sweeney adds that he hopes this year’s MiX will result in outcomes that reflect “the hopefulness of starting. When you have 200 people in a room with open minds and a beer in their hands and a smile on their faces, then it’s a start. I'm excited to be a part of something that could someday be referred to as ‘the start.’”
 
MiX is free and open to the public. Register for MiX 2016: “The Power of Ideas” here.
 

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.”
 
 

Minneapolis’ most ambitious antipoverty and community empowerment network just got a big boost. In early October, Northside Achievement Zone (NAZ) received $6 million in combined grants from Target and General Mills — $1 million per year for three years from each company. These funds will help replace a federal grant that is ending.
 
NAZ has a revolutionary mission: to coordinate and empower “more than 40 local organizations and schools...working in radically new ways to permanently close the academic achievement gap and end poverty,” according to a Fallon-produced promotional video. Partner organizations include early childhood program providers like the YWCA and Minneapolis Public Schools; public, charter and private K-12 schools; expanded learning/mentoring programs like Plymouth Youth Center; health, housing and career organizations like Washburn Center for Children, Urban Homeworks and Twin Cities RISE!; and higher education institutions like Minneapolis Community and Technical College and the University of Minnesota.
 
NAZ is broadly modeled after the Harlem Children’s Zone, an antipoverty and childhood education network in New York City. But its huge partner network and bottom-up approach to empowerment make NAZ arguably the most ambitious initiative of its kind anywhere in the U.S.
 
NAZ specifically seeks out the most vulnerable, hard-to-reach families, many of whom face housing insecurity, chronic joblessness and other obstacles. Ideally, each participating mom enrolls her child before birth, signing a commitment to make college a top priority for the little one. She and her partner, if present, pair with a coach responsible for building a customized support plan with the family’s input — complete with “specific, individualized goals that make sense for that particular family,” all framed in terms of college-readiness, says NAZ communications director Katie Murphy.
 
The typical NAZ family works with various partner organizations to find suitable, stable housing, stay on top of their healthcare needs (including mental health, a big issue for new moms), improve financial literacy and enroll in parenting classes, among other things. As they grow, kids tap into these networks too; North High School, for instance, has NAZ academic coaches who work with students on site.
 
“When it’s time to meet with their academic coaches, students can just walk down the hall,” says Murphy.
 
NAZ’s new grants could help the organization reach a long-held goal — to impact 1,000 families and 2,500 kids, representing 40 percent of Northside families with children under 18 — as early as next year. NAZ is already most of the way there: At last count, the network had about 870 families and nearly 1,900 kids.
 
By 2020, says NAZ President & CEO Sondra Samuels, NAZ is poised to impact 1,700 or more families per year. That number includes families actively engaged with partner organizations, plus those who’ve “graduated” and no longer need to tap NAZ’s services.
 
Graduated parents and older students often assume mentorship or advisory roles within the NAZ structure. With preexisting social networks and ample reserves of community trust, says Murphy, current and past participants are NAZ’s most effective on-the-ground recruiters. When NAZ hires family coaches, they look exclusively at their roster of enrolled parents.
 
NAZ is so confident in its approach, and in the power of community-driven family empowerment in general, that it hands out T-shirts — to toddlers—proclaiming their expected college graduation year. For parents used to hearing that their kids won’t amount to much, or that they need to have “realistic” expectations, something as simple as a T-shirt can inspire belief in what’s possible.
 
“NAZ addresses the achievement gap by striking at the heart of the belief gap,” says Samuels, “and coupling the power to inspire with a proven system that provides our families with a ladder out of poverty.”
 
Though today’s NAZ takes a holistic approach to antipoverty work, its predecessor organization did far more targeted work. Founded in 2003, the PEACE Foundation was a “grassroots movement across race, class and geography [with] the common goal of significantly reducing violence in North Minneapolis,” according to NAZ’s website. The PEACE Foundation enjoyed ample community support, but stakeholders worried that it wasn’t doing enough to address the root causes of violence, including what Samuels calls “a direct correlation” between poor educational outcomes and violent crime.
 
“In recognition of the clear link between poverty, the educational achievement gap and violence, the PEACE Foundation was already moving toward” an approach that included support for families and early childhood education initiatives, says Samuels. “When we heard about the Harlem Children’s Zone, we realized that it was possible to pull all the levers that hold the people back and empower the community to change.”
 
“We’ve been told that what we’re trying to do is unrealistic,” she adds. “But we remind ourselves that every great advance” — women’s suffrage, marriage equality, putting a man on the moon — “was also ‘unrealistic’ once.”
 
 
 

Gardening Matters, a community gardening nonprofit based in South Minneapolis, is putting on an MSP-wide seed and plant distribution event Saturday, May 16, at three locations around town: St. Olaf Lutheran Church in North Minneapolis, Waite House in South Minneapolis and Great River School in St. Paul’s Midway neighborhood.
 
The organization’s members can choose from three packages. Per Gardening Matters’ website, a Small Garden Package contains 12 seed packs and 12 seedlings, enough for a container garden, small plot or raised bed. With 20 seed packs and 20 seedlings, a Medium Garden Package is sufficient for a 12’ x 12’ backyard garden or community plot. A Large Garden Package, brimming with 40 seed packs and 72 seedlings, is ideal for a “very large” backyard garden or larger community garden plot.
 
Each package comes with a suggested membership fee, calculated at a significant discount to the seeds’ and plants’ retail value. Members can further defray their packages’ cost by participating in Gardening Matters’ work-share program, which requires at least one annual volunteer stint at a Gardening Matters event.
 
With snacks, kid-friendly outdoor activities and live music, each May 16 distribution hub will double as a “pop-up celebration of spring,” says Susan Phillips, Gardening Matters’ executive director — a great kick-off to the growing season after a long winter hibernation.
 
“Broadly speaking, Gardening Matters’ mission is to support MSP residents who want to grow their own food, either as part of a community garden or in their own backyards, while building connections and facilitating knowledge-sharing among its members,” says Phillips.
 
This mission is gaining traction by the month. The three May 16 distribution locations are just three of about 10 Food Resource Hubs across MSP: three in St. Paul and seven in Minneapolis, up from none in St. Paul and just three in Minneapolis when Gardening Matters launched the Food Resource Hubs program in 2011. Collectively, Food Resource Hubs serve 3,000 adult members and 3,000 kids, with about 20 urban acres under cultivation as a direct result of members’ activities.
 
(Incidentally, Gardening Matters is likely to rename the Food Resource Hubs program soon due to a conflict with an unrelated but similarly named federal program.)
 
Although Gardening Matters still plays a critical role in overseeing and organizing each hub, the organization ultimately aims for hubs to be semi-autonomous and largely self-sustaining. “Each of our hubs has a unique mix of members and a unique culture,” explains Phillips.
 
Gardening Matters’ hubs also serve as a focal point for education and leadership training, both critical to fostering self-sustaining networks — not to mention good gardening practices. Founded to support cooperation among community gardeners, the group’s community-building power isn’t to be underestimated: Phillips recounts the story of a Gardening Matters-affiliated North Minneapolis community garden whose members cooperated to clean up a blighted, drug-ridden property on their block.
 
Thanks to the connections the neighbors built in the garden, says Phillips, “they were empowered to tackle bigger issues in their community.”
 
Phillips is turning Gardening Matters into a force for advocacy and city-wide change, too. “Land tenure is a huge issue right now,” she says, noting that many MSP community gardens have long waiting lists. This year, Gardening Matters is launching a major push to empower renters who don’t have access to suitable outdoor plots. Container gardens, which can easily fit on porches or even windowsills, are viable solutions for thousands of land-poor urban gardeners; the challenge is educating people about how to properly set up and care for them.
 
Phillips is also spearheading educational programs and outreach initiatives targeting immigrant communities, particularly Latino and Hmong groups, whose first-generation members have prior agricultural experience but aren’t aware of the urban gardening resources available in their adopted city.
 
“In everything Gardening Matters does, the goal is to expand the number of [MSP residents] who feel empowered to grow their own food,” says Phillips.
 
 

 
A successful Kickstarter that netted Great Lakes Clothing Company more than $20,000 will allow the custom clothing company to move into a new collaborative work space on March 1. The company will share space near the North Minneapolis riverfront with several other Minnesota companies—including Marked Leather, Mill City Fineries, and the U.S.-made artisanal clothing and product distributor William Rogue & Co.
 
“We’re committed to the idea of native businesses sticking together, sharing resources and space,” says cofounder Spencer Barrett, hinting at the prospect of future apparel and branding partnerships with Great Lakes’ co-tenants. The move will roughly quadruple Great Lakes’ floor space, from 600 to about 2,400 square feet,
 
For now, cofounders Barrett and David Burke plan to use the expanded space to grow their inventory and make way for new hires to manage inventory, sales and the company’s expanding online presence.
 
Great Lakes has already shipped its branded T-shirts, crew sweaters, polos and accessories — including koozies — to 47 states, building buzz largely through word of mouth, a no-frills video marketing campaign orchestrated by Barrett, and a “brand ambassador” program that recruits college students to sport its clothing on campuses across the Midwest.
 
Customer service doesn’t hurt either. The co-founders include a handwritten thank-you note with every online order and send a follow-up email about a week after each customer’s order arrives.
 
According to the co-founders, Great Lakes’ brand centers around “life at the lake,” a laid-back, nostalgic vibe that’s instantly recognizable to anyone who has spent a warm day near a body of water in Minnesota. The brand’s mascot is an understated loon, a Northern archetype that needs no introduction.
 
“We found a huge gap in the apparel market,” explains Burke. “No one in Minnesota, or anywhere in the Midwest for that matter, was taking advantage of our unique Northern lifestyle and fusing those ideals into a brand. We strive to create fun, useful and well-made products inspired by life at the lake.”
 
“We were inspired by shared memories of time spent around the water” in the Twin Cities and up north, adds Barrett. “It’s a common experience shared not just by people in Minneapolis-St. Paul and Minnesota, but by anyone who lives near fresh water.”
 
Another Great Lakes differentiator: Unlike many of their competitors, including similarly sized startups, Burke and Barrett are committed to a totally American-made supply chain. The pair will oversee all design work at their new Minneapolis studio, even as the company grows.
 
Great Lakes currently relies on a North Carolina manufacturer to supply the bulk of their unfinished shirts — “that’s where most of the American textile industry operates these days,” explains Barrett — with partners in the Twin Cities handling embroidering, printing and other final touches.
 
Though the online sales model is working well for now, Burke and Barrett are hoping to diversify in the months ahead. A last-minute decision to put on a popup store during the holiday season paid off big time, “blowing past our already pretty ambitious projections for November,” says Burke.
 
The co-founders are already exploring additional popup opportunities at outdoor events — including a “winter golf” tournament on Lake Minnetonka in mid-February — and, possibly, local brewery taprooms.
 
But “the dream,” says Burke, “is a flagship store that gets right to the core of the Great Lakes brand,” with an expansive retail area up front and a fulfillment center in the back.
 
“The popup experience has really reinforced the importance of personal connections for us,” says Burke, noting that in-store conversion rates are about five times higher than online. “We want to be as friendly and hospitable to the customer as we can.”
 

On September 10, the Minnesota Cup announced its best “breakthrough idea” of 2014: 75F, a Mankato-based technology company that makes efficient, cost-effective HVAC sensors. The company, which emerged as the winner of MN Cup’s Energy/Clean Tech/Water category division before emerging as the grand prize winner, took home a total of $105,000 in prize money and funding commitments.
 
But it wasn’t the only company that won big in this year’s MN Cup. Trovita Health Science, a startup based in Minneapolis' North Loop that makes a meal replacement drink called ENU, took home a $30,000 prize as the winner of the Food/Ag/Beverage category. YOXO, a St. Paul toymaker that uses simple cardboard connectors in innovative ways, also took earned $30,000 for topping the General/Miscellaneous category. Four other category winners won between $20,000 and $30,000 in prize money, and earned immeasurable visibility for their ideas.
 
All told, more than 1,300 Minnesota entrepreneurs and startups participated in this year’s MN Cup—a record turnout. At least 50 percent of all entrants came from the Twin Cities. In a press release, MN Cup co-founder Scott Litman described the field as “the most competitive yet” in the competition’s decade-long history.
 
Aside from 75F and the rest of MN Cup’s category winners, the September 10 event highlighted the achievements of local entrepreneurs and thought leaders who support the Twin Cities’ growing startup scene. After raising more than $10,000 via Kickstarter, Twin Cities Mobile Market secured a $1,000 cash prize for its elevator pitch at this year’s Minnesota Cup. TCMM is a “grocery store on wheels” that brings fresh, affordable produce and other nutritious foods to Minneapolis-St. Paul neighborhoods that lack easy access to full-service grocery stores.
 
MN Cup also recognized Carlson School of Business grad Steve Eilertson as its “2014 Entrepreneur of the Year” for his role as president of locally based Grain Millers, Inc. And thanks to a partnership with the Holmes Center for Entrepreneurship, women were much more visible at this year’s event. Published figures indicate that more than one-third of all entries came from women-led teams. Nearly half of all entries had at least one female participant.
 
For entrepreneurs who missed the May filing deadline for MN Cup 2014, next year brings a new opportunity. In a September 12 interview on Minnesota Public Radio, Litman had some sage advice for those who would participate. “It might seem un-Minnesotan,” he said, “but successful entrepreneurs” have to be unabashed about self-promotion and arguing for their vision.
 
He sees two big reasons why enthusiastic entrepreneurs fail. First, they don’t ask for enough money. It’s critical to pin down the cost of developing, marketing and scaling an idea, and many startup owners underestimate the costs they’ll incur before revenues start coming in. By holding out the prospect of five-figure prizes for winning entrants, and by connecting all entrants with mentors and investors who can inject additional capital into worthy startups, MN Cup helps bridge this financing gap.
 
Just as important, entrepreneurs must surround themselves with the right people, who may be more important than the idea itself. “A great idea in the hands of a mediocre team may not work,” said Litman. He argues that MN Cup is designed to help entrepreneurs self-select: Those who thrive on high-stakes pitches and meticulous business plan development leave the process much stronger, while those who flounder realize that they may need help turning their vision into a reality.
 
“It’s like American Idol,” said Litman. “Lots of people can sing well,” but not everyone’s voice can fill Xcel Energy Center.
 

Social Innovation Lab, a Minneapolis-based social justice organization begun in partnership with the Bush Foundation, is holding its next "Leading Innovation Deep Dive" on September 15 and 16 at the Urban Research and Outreach-Engagement Center on Minneapolis's North Side. The event will be one of a dozen that the organization has held in the past two years, all focused on training local employers and employees to "solve complex social challenges."

Social Innovation Lab is the brainchild of Sam Grant and Michael Bischoff, two social justice veterans who have decades of combined experience. Grant currently runs two other nonprofits, AfroEco and Full Circle Community Institute. Bischoff is Clarity Foundation's lead consultant. Bo Thao-Urabe, who is the Senior Director of Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy and runs RedGreen Rivers (an initiative that supports female artisans), is assisting Grant and Bischoff.

The Deep Dive aims to unite decision makers and role players from diverse backgrounds to talk through—and implement, at least on an experimental level—solutions to the Twin Cities' most entrenched social issues, including broken food systems and racial disparities in housing and hiring. The goal is to customize solutions to fit the needs of individual organizations, creating a graduating class of "change agents" who can apply what they've uncovered to the problems they face.

The Deep Dive walks participants through every step of the change-seeking process, from "clarifying the intent of your team" to "build[ing] prototypes that develop practical solutions" and "scal[ing] innovation for social benefit," according to the Lab's website. Participants are guided by six global principles, from "bring[ing] an open heart, mind, and will" to "honor[ing" commitments."

The ambition and optimism of the Deep Dive—and Social Innovation Lab in general—is a conscious counterweight to the sometimes-overwhelming feeling of powerlessness that can afflict people who work for positive change.

"Everybody that we've talked to is saying...the same things," says Grant in a video posted to Social Innovation Lab's website. "As hard as they work, they feel like they're facing this dynamic...where they're getting one step forward and two steps back, and they can't really sense that what they're doing is leading to the deep change that they desire."

As Bischoff puts it, it's much easier—and more exciting—to work on overcoming these obstacles as part of a team, "instead of just trying harder by yourself." The end result: a "community of social innovators" that drives momentum for positive change and "close[s] all of these persistent gaps," says Grant.
 

A recent city-ordinance change has paved the way for mobile grocery stores. Now the Wilder Foundation’s Twin Cities Mobile Market, a repurposed Metro Transit bus that cost the foundation just over $6,000, can distribute fresh produce on St. Paul’s East Side and the North Side of Minneapolis.

Both neighborhoods are considered “food deserts” because the corner shops and independent markets that provide residents with groceries lack fresh produce and other wholesome items.

“[Low-income] people living in these neighborhoods are already at higher risk for obesity and diabetes,” explains Leah Driscoll, the Wilder Foundation program manager in charge of the project. “Living in a food desert makes these problems worse.”

Many residents of these lower-income areas also lack reliable transportation to supermarkets in adjacent city neighborhoods or suburbs, further constraining their shopping options.

The ordinance change, which requires each food truck-like mobile grocery store to stock at least 50 individual fruits and vegetables in at least seven varieties, replaces an older ordinance that had restricted mobile grocery sales to areas around senior housing complexes.

The new law permits mobile grocery stores to set up in commercial, industrial and apartment complex parking lots between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. They can’t locate within 100 feet of traditional grocery stores and farmers’ markets without explicit permission from owners or operators. They also can’t sell certain items, including tobacco products and alcohol.

In addition to the requisite variety of fresh fruit and veggies, Twin Cities Mobile Market will also stock other staples, including bread, dairy products, meat, canned goods, and other non-perishables at costs competitive to places like Cub Foods. Before selecting sites for weekly visits—“public housing high-rises, senior buildings, community centers, and churches” will get the highest priority, according to the foundation—Wilder must secure at least 50 signatures from locals interested in using the market.

Driscoll is working closely with local community leaders to ensure that “we’re actually wanted and needed in the neighborhoods that we select—we don’t just want to show up,” she says.

Twin Cities Mobile Market, which Wilder unveiled on Monday at a “sneak preview” event hosted by Icehouse, isn’t the only mobile grocery truck set to take advantage of Minneapolis’s ordinance change. Urban Ventures, a faith-based organization headquartered in the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis, is putting the finishing touches on a repurposed refrigerator truck that will begin making grocery sales around South Minneapolis, and eventually the North Side, later this summer. The truck, whose wares will include healthy helpings of local produce, will accept EBT and carry a nutrition specialist to help customers make healthy buying decisions.

 

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

Successful creative agency KNOCK is likely to find even more open doors in its future, with expansion of its brand strategy, advertising, and design services to global clients.
 
The agency's CEO, Lili Hall--quoted in our lead feature this week--has been zipping around the world in the past six months, and just completed a Master's degree in international practice management. She's in talks with business connections in countries like Saudi Arabia and India, and she anticipates much more global work coming to KNOCK in the near future.
 
"Global is really becoming our focus," she says. "We have a great partner who's consulting with us about cultural relevance, and we feel very connected to global networks in a new way."
 
Hall founded the company in 2001, just a few months after 9/11, and she admits the timing was challenging. Without a business plan, and in a tricky economic climate, KNOCK might have faltered if it hadn't been for Hall's passionate belief in creating an agency based on the right way to treat colleagues and clients.
 
"When I started the company, I reflected on the attributes of people I admired and respected," she says. "But I also thought about the situations I'd seen that were negative. I created a list of 'how to never treat people,' and in many ways, that's become a major part of our philosophy."
 
For example, KNOCK stands apart for blending creatives with account professionals, which is an unusual arrangement for an agency. Those two "sides" tend to do battle, but Hall saw the power of collaboration from the start, and has shown that blending those viewpoints creates more strength for clients. In other words, when thinking about how never to treat people, the first lesson is: don't make your colleagues into enemies, just because of their job titles.
 
Hall also credits transparency, a proactive approach, and internal entrepreneurial energy for driving growth throughout KNOCK.
 
Source: Lili Hall, KNOCK
Writer: Elizabeth Millard

The Minneapolis health department is helping ten corner stores try to boost the sale of fresh produce.

The state-funded initiative is part of a broader effort to combat obesity and chronic disease by improving access to healthy, fresh foods, especially in certain underserved neighborhoods.

North Minneapolis, for example, has only two full-service grocery stores and limited transit options for getting to and from them, which leaves many residents dependent on corner stores for groceries.

Health officials realized those corner stores could be a key partner in improving food options, so they decided to design a pilot program based on similar ones in New York, New Orleans and Philadelphia. The city asked for applications from 90 corner stores, mostly on the North Side and in the Phillips neighborhood. About 15 responded and 10 were selected for the initial trial, which started this month.

"We have so many corner stores in Minneapolis, it was just a natural fit," says project specialist Aliyah Ali.

The city helped coordinate with a wholesaler, Bix Produce, to distribute fresh produce to the participating stores. It set up training for store owners on how to properly handle produce to maximize shelf life. And it came up with a specific action plan for each store involving signs, displays and store layout changes aimed at making fresh produce more visible, attractive and affordable to customers.

What makes Minneapolis' initiative unique is that the city has a ordinance to back up the program's goals. In 2008, the City Council approved the Minneapolis Staple Foods Ordinance, which requires all stores with a grocery license to carry a certain variety of fruits, vegetables, meat or protein, dairy and bread or cereal. The Healthy Corner Store Program is helping store owners comply with those rules, says Ali.

A recent review of 35 corner stores found that most were not in compliance with the ordinance and that more than a third didn't carry any fresh produce.

The city plans to track produce sales at the participating corner stores through June 2011 to see if the program boosts sales as it hopes. If it works, officials hope to expand it city wide.

Stores participating in the Healthy Corner Store Program are: Vitalife Pharmacy Rx (4151 Fremont Ave N), Lowry Food Market (628 Lowry Ave. N), One Stop Station (1604 W. Broadway), Northside Food Market (3559 Lyndale Ave. N), Glenwood Market (1501 Glenwood Ave. N), Cedar Food & Grill (2600 Cedar Ave. S), Neighborhood Grocery (814 East Franklin Ave), Shabelle Grocery (2325 E. Franklin), West Bank Grocery (417 Cedar Ave. S), and Flag Foods (2820 East 42nd St).

Source: Aliyah Ali, City of Minneapolis
Writer: Dan Haugen

A Minneapolis imaging company is hoping its MRI technology can become a magnet for investors.

Steady State Imaging recently disclosed that it's seeking to raise $4 million to continue refining and commercializing its technology, which enables MRI machines to image both soft and hard tissues. The fundraising round kicked off in October with the sale of $250,000 in equity, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The technology is a software platform called SWIFT (short for SWeep Imaging with Fourier Transformation), which was developed by Dr. Michael Garwood at the University of Minnesota's Center for Magnetic Resonance Research and can be installed on existing MRI machines, much like a firmware update can upgrade a cell phone or video game console.

Currently, MRI machines are good at imaging soft tissue in the body, such as your brain or muscles, but it's not the best option for imaging hard tissue like bone or cartilage. X-rays are still the most common method for imaging those harder tissues, despite the risks from ionizing (x-ray) radiation.

"Dr. Garwood's technique really broadens the applicability of MRI. It allows for really good imaging of hard and soft tissues," says Steady State Imaging CEO Danny Cunagin. "You can kind of think about his invention as combining an X-ray machine and an MRI machine in one device, without the ionizing radiation of X-rays."

Another benefit of the software is that it allows MRI machines to run much quieter than most do today, which makes it more patient-friendly, says Cunagin. It's currently for sale for in the pre-clinical market, and Cunagin says they expect to announce a clinical partner within the next three to four months.

Steady State Imaging was incorporated in 2005 and relaunched in 2008 under new leadership. It employs about half a dozen people at its office just west of downtown Minneapolis. Cunagin says the latest round of fundraising will allow the company to refine the software based on feedback from existing users, as well as prepare for commercialization in the clinical market.

Source: Danny Cunagin, Steady State Imaging
Writer: Dan Haugen

Kindred Kitchen wants to help food entrepreneurs avoid getting stuck with a half-baked business plan.

The North Side food business incubator celebrates its grand opening this week on West Broadway. The nonprofit will provide affordable, licensed commercial kitchen rental, as well as a series of classes and workshops covering everything from ordering ingredients to refining a menu.

Kitchen Operations Manager Terese Hill says the area is full of "hidden food entrepreneurs"--bakers, caterers and others who either work out of their homes or rent odd hours in church basements or restaurant kitchens. Those arrangements can be illegal or inconvenient and often don't allow businesses to get to the next level.

"You see a lot of churches that rent out their kitchen space, but they may not be licensed and they may not have state-of-the-art commercial equipment," says Hill.

The Twin Cities is home to only a small handful of licensed commercial kitchens for rent, says Hill, and Kindred Kitchen will make this type of space more accessible in the neighborhood. The facility will also offer a three-to-four-month curriculum on operating a food business.

The classes and workshops are open to anyone, with scholarships available for low-income North Side residents. The topics range from food industry essentials such as ordering ingredients, managing inventory, and proper handling and preparation to business basics like planning, marketing, and financials.

The kitchen already has five caterers who are using the facility. Hill says they have space for between 30 and 40 users per month. Rental rates are $25 per hour with a 10-hour-per-month commitment, or $35 per hour with no monthly commitment.

Kindred Kitchen celebrates its grand opening 4 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 11, at 1210 West Broadway Ave. N.

Source: Terese Hill, Kindred Kitchen
Writer: Dan Haugen