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Creative Economy : Featured Stories

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Ivey Awards Founder Scott Mayer: Let's Make the Most of Our Theater Power

In a Q and A with The Line, marketer and theater maven Mayer asks: with nearly eighty professional theater companies in town, why don't we do more to promote theater as an attraction that sets the Twin Cities apart?

The Line's Great Twin Cities Croissant Taste-Off

Croissant-loving editor compares four of the finest products of local artisanship.



Secret City: A Slide Show

On Saturday night, lensman Bill Kelley braved the threat of another downpour to take some lively shots of Secret City, Minneapolis' answer to the Northern Spark alfresco arts festival, which was based solely in St Paul this year.  Check out his images of Aztec dance, djs, fire performance, sound art, and a huge inflatable civic mood ring called MIMMI.

The Top Five Tips for Creating Great Urban Places

"If urban planning is musical composition, then placemaking is improvisational street performance." Five tested tips for doing the much-talked-about, rarely defined, improvisational, street-level, people-oriented form of urban design that's rapidly replacing the old top-down paradigm in the Twin Cities and across the country.

Minnesota's funniest nonprofit board

If you're on the board of directors of HUGE Theater in Minneapolis, you have to improvise. That is, you have to actually go onstage and do improv in a three-evening run that is also an official series of board meetings.

A Line or Two: A Nighttime Labyrinth, a Pop-Up Festival

Your editor helps run a meditative labyrinth-walking project amid the cheerful madness of the Northern Spark one-night, all-night arts festival--and points out another cool artfest that's ongoing.

Garages For Art's Sake

For artist/gallerist Pete Driessen and the theater artists of Off-Leash Area, turning their garages into art spaces provided opportunities for innovation, experimentation, and freedom, very close to home. And the neighbors don't mind a bit.

Mike Smieja and We Can Grow: Building Urban Gardens, Helping Urban Gardeners Thrive

The onetime marketing professional made a career u-turn when he discovered how gardening--and cooking and eating healthy produce right from the soil--could change lives. Now his nonprofit startup helps inner-city newcomers to gardening make healthy foods part of their lives.

The Two-Wheel Entrepreneurs: Bike culture spawns businesses nationwide

While the Twin Cities duke it out with Portland over which metropolis sets the gold standard of bike culture, other cities--some of them unlikely--are becoming serious players in the boom. Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, DC, and Tampa are among the places where ingenious entrepreneurs are "riding" the new bike culture,

A Line or Two: Minneapolis' Creative Economy by the Numbers

It came into my mailbox the other day--Minneapolis' first-ever study of the impact of the creative sector on the city's bottom line, in terms of sales and employment. There were points of pride, surprises, and caveats, along with ample proof that the arts pull more than their weight in bringing prosperity to the city.

The May Day Parade: A Slide Show

The May Day Parade and Festival is our Mardi Gras--a heartfelt explosion of color, music, art, fun, and earth-friendliness after the weariness of long winters. Bill Kelley caught the parade action last Sunday in the Powderhorn neighborhood as Minneapolitans dressed up and rocked out to say goodbye to the cold.

A Line or Two: Downstairs at Honey

Monday night I joined urbanist Katherine Loflin, The Line publisher Dena Alspach, colleagues from the Citizens' League, an old magazine-biz pal, and a lively audience for some informal urbanism: an improv comedian emceeing a discussion about why people love/don't love the Twin Cities--and why they stay or go. Craft beer and Asian appetizers were in the mix.

Coworking for Fashionistas: Two designers open "Showroom"

Jen Chilstrom and Kimberly Jurek have just opened (May 1) a new kind of fashion boutique. The Showroom is a combination retail shop/workshop/coworking space where local designers can come, work, exhibit, share ideas, and grow creatively.
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