Creative Economy : Featured Stories

In the push for STEM-oriented education, are we underplaying the creative and communicative skills that 21st-century business needs just as badly as it needs math and science competence? Minnesota 20/20 communications director Joe Sheeran asks the question in a recent blog post.

Crowdfunding powerhouse Kickstarter is becoming the go-to support system for a wider and wider variety of business ventures locally and nationally. Here are three Twin Cities success stories: a wallet, a home-security device, a restaurant--that illustrate how Kickstarter fuses funding, marketing, R and D, and even a kind of before-the-fact customer support.

The founder and artistic director of Youth Performance Company reflects on what she's learned from the kids she works with about the real source of the "bullying epidemic" in our schools--and why she commissioned a musical theater piece to deal with it.

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: The IFP Minnesota Center for Media Arts lauds James Bakkom, a one-of-a-kind artist who also contributed to some of our region's finest achievements in theater and film.

The Dakota War of 1862, the survival of Native languages, Minneapolis' urban Indian heartland--these were the challenging themes that a group of young Native filmmakers took up this summer at an innovative media institute dedicated to reconnecting them with their roots.

The two groups that anchor the Twin Cities' food and restaurant renaissance--the growers and the chefs--came together in impressive numbers Sunday night for Farm in the Cities, the second annual celebration of furrow-to-table hyperlocal food culture, held at our preeminent Spanish restaurant, Solera. And Managing Photographer Bill Kelley was there.

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 lively lunch at Minneapolis' newest brewpub on its first day--and a first look at Paul's Ball.

If you've got a startup ready or revving, but don't happen to live in the investment hotbeds on the East or West coasts, it can be a challenge to fund your dreams. Enter crowd-sourced funding. Once pretty much limited to artistic projects like new bands, Kickstarter and its cousins are becoming the recourse of choice for a wider and wider array of baby businesses.

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: Check out a mashup of comedy, improv, belly dancing, and scary knowledge this Sunday.

Mike Fitzsimmons and John Grider, AKA Broken Crow, explain how the Irrigate initiative helped get their intense, stylish animal images up on a University Avenue business--helping that business to stand out during light rail construction.

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 pair of highly unusual--as in flamboyantly libidinous--eco-activists bring their film-in-progress to town.

Saint Paul's music-loving mayor wants a city with a scene--a dynamic downtown with the special energy that only art and music provide. Last Thursday he shared some successes, some hopes, and some rock-concert memories with The Line.

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: Midway Contemporary Art's library, a genuine hidden treasure.

Our yearly onstage carnival of the odd, the eloquent, the poignant, and the perverse is over for 2012. Bill Kelley was in the audience at the Rarig Center and Intermedia Arts to record six of the 163 shows that took the Fringe stages between August 2 and 12. From a raucous burlesque version of a classic TV sketch to Chinese dance to a surreal Dust Bowl fable, here are images of performance at its edgiest.

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 lunchtime celebration of local Japanese food.