creative economy : Featured Stories

Smart cities like Saint Paul are renovating their train stations (like the multi-modal hub Union Depot) into neighborhood and urban amenities.

Few organizations have done more to connect locally minded craft-beer enthusiasts with the startups that drive Minnesota’s resurgent brewing industry than the Beer Dabbler, which holds its Beer Dabbler Winter Carnival on January 25.

The Line buzzed in 2013 with articles—many of them in the top 10 most-read of the year—on topics starting with a “b”: beer and architect-designed breweries, beekeeping and bike entrepreneurs among them.

The Line asked Alexis Ohanian, who is speaking at the Walker Art Center and is best known as the cofounder of the social news site reddit, about how to create community on the Internet and his advice for startups.

The report, “Financing Worker Cooperative Start-Ups in Minnesota,” produced in a Master’s of Public Affairs course at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School, focuses on the unique funding challenges of cooperative startups and social enterprises.

The burgeoning winter-biking scene wouldn’t be possible without the bike designers, entrepreneurs, co-ops, fests, expos, zines, and coffee shops that give the community its innovative edge and vitality.

The Northeast Investment Cooperative is a for-profit group that enables people to collectively buy, renovate, and manage commercial and residential property. NEIC's first project is reinvigorating Central Avenue with tenants that focus on bikes, bread, and beer.

In the world of handmade guitar gear, Twin Cities inventors are known by guitarists the world over for bringing a range of experience and creativity to products that for decades were mass-produced.

Scott Ervin has opened the first micro-distillery in Minneapolis, Norseman Distillery.

Heather and John McDougall, who are siblings, have designed the bamboo Bogobrush, a "buy one, give one" product that provides toothbrushes to people in need.

The Makers Coalition is supporting a new generation of industrial sewers and the local makers movement. The coalition brings together 60 businesses, educational institutions, nonprofit organizations, and service providers to fulfill its mission: To bring back industrial sewing skills, which largely disappeared in America decades ago.