Creative Economy : Featured Stories

Despite our love of micro-brews, many of the ingredients in our favorite beers haven't been sourced locally. That's changing as brewers tap into the local farming movement in their communities to add more fresh flavors and ingredients.

MSP isn't usually mentioned in the same breath as Silicon Valley and Austin. But our local tech startup scene is leaping forward due to homegrown co-working companies, which lower barriers to success, growth and profitability through collaboration.

CoCo's coworking spaces, NiceRide's ubiquitous bikes and incubator kitchens were just the beginning. The sharing economy storming the Twin Cities also includes a burgeoning ridesharing (or carsharing) phenomenon.

After decades of population loss, many cities are now growing faster than the rest of their metro areas. Urban living is now the new normal. What amenities are necessary to sustain a dense and vibrant city? The answers might surprise you.

The Twin Cities metro is a hotbed of manufacturers and fabricators innovating and growing their businesses to provide easier, faster, less expensive solutions for design and construction challenges.    

What turns a pint at the local microbrewery into a feast? Transforms ho-hum lunch hours into culinary adventures? Generates curbside communities? Tests an entrepreneur's appetite for a new business? Twin Cities food trucks!  

Since the passage of the Surly Bill 2012, craft-beer entrepreneurs have rapidly opened breweries with taprooms in neighborhoods throughout Minneapolis and St. Paul. All are doing their part to turn neighborhoods into top-of-mind destinations.

Since 2010, JXTA has been providing paid opportunities for young people to gain skills in art and design. These youth make an hourly wage, between minimum wage and $10 per hour, while being trained in areas like graphic design and contemporary art.

The Central Corridor is becoming the Twin Cities' new cultural hotspot showcasing local diversity, bringing communities closer together, and boosting economic opportunities.

Creative CityMaking, Intermedia Arts’ bold placemaking, problem-solving collaboration with the City of Minneapolis, recently received a three-year grant that promises to deepen the initiative’s reach in previously unimaginable ways.

Incubator or community kitchens have been gaining momentum in the Twin Cities, bringing together food entrepreneurs, ingredients, and innovation.

Issue Media Group (The Line's parent company) has launched Creative Exchange, a national online platform for storytelling and resource sharing around creativity and community. Saint Paul artist/organizer Oskar Ly was featured in the first issue.

From beer sampling to wearable tech to Pecha Kucha, Club Entrepreneur is cultivating new business relationships and startups by supporting Twin Cities' innovators with actionable content and connections.

The first article in a new series on Twin Cities artists who build community, activate space, engage viewers, and stimulate interaction or dialogue with their work, and how their creative placemaking helps reveal and enhance community identity.

The Minneapolis theater company Ten Thousand Things builds connections  both radical and backed by tradition by telling  stories for intimate and often non-traditional audiences, with the lights up and minimal staging, using the power of communal imagination.