Coordination/Collaboration : Featured Stories

Last Wednesday, some 150 Minnesota Muslims got together to share concerns and hopes with their legislators at the ninth Annual Muslim Day at the Capitol, organized by the Muslim American Society of Minnesota. Here's a video look at the event, from our friends at Minnesota 2020.

It's weathered industry exoduses and foreclosure--but now the proud old East Side Saint Paul neighborhood is home to a hot new bar/restaurant, Ward 6, that's both a sign of, and a force in, a wider renewal. 

This week: You've heard of "yarn bombing," knitting as a kind of graffiti (knitted cozies around trees and phone poles, yarn symbols strung through the links of chain-link fences, etc.). But how about knitting as out-there performance art? Our most fabulous local yarnmeister, StevenBe, will be doing just that on March 23rd. How will he turn knitting into performance? By weaving in stories--yarns?--from his glamorous life.

On the frontier of urban development today are some big players: major medical, educational, and other institutions with a stake in the growth and well-being of their communities. They're not just building new buildings--they're revitalizing neighborhoods in partnership with government, nonprofits, and citizens.

Last Wednesday's kickoff event for the linkup between the search-engine giant and the local coworking space was full of energy, ambition, and promise for local entrepreneurs, some of whom think Silicon Prairie's ready to bloom.

The University of St. Thomas's Minneapolis campus is home to a quiet program that's incubated and helped fund some of the Twin Cities' most prominent (and promising) tech startups--including several run by women. It's a place where professors turn into business advisors and colleagues and the help just keeps on coming.

This serious-minded but light-hearted nonprofit tutors at-risk kids in the coolest possible way--by matching them up with adults in creative industries. The result: deep connections, academic achievement, and fun for everybody.

For executive-search professional Lars Leafblad, recently named head of the Bush Foundation's leadership program, the top-down leadership paradigm is dying. Despite political gridlock, a new ethic of connectivity, consensus, and compromise is struggling to be born--and he has some ideas on how we can all help it happen.

The Central Corridor light rail line (aka the Green Line) won't be finished till 2014, but it's already earning its keep, writes Conrad LeFiebre of MN 2020, as development advances, once-disrupted business stabilizes, and observers add up the unique advantages of a line that connects two downtowns.

Despite some women-led startups, high tech here, as elsewhere, is still more or less drowning in testosterone. But some strong local initiatives are pointing the way toward more opportunities for women to get their geek on.

A pair of determined nonprofits, Minneapolis' Urban Homeworks and Dayton’s Bluff Neighborhood Housing Services in Saint Paul, begin by fixing up damaged, foreclosed, and derelict houses--and then go on to help strengthen the surrounding neighborhoods in many other ways.

What is an art gallery? What should it do, not just for the artists it shows and the patrons who view and buy the art, but for the community as a whole? These are some of the questions Tricia Khutoretsky and her colleagues are asking as they prepare to debut a new, and rather oddly named, art space in Northeast Minneapolis.

Jay Walljasper checks in with British urbanist Charles Landry, who recaps his experience touring the Twin Cities, meeting a wide array of local urban changemakers, and applying his principles of city vitality to our reality. And Landry draws some conclusions about how our towns can thrive in the coming decades.

Saint Paul's WomenVenture helps woman-run startups get off the ground with a potent mix of feminist spirit, microlending, and business incubation. But as its clients testify, it's the group's commitment to ongoing support that sets it apart.

In A Line or Two, I share some of my enthusiasms and discoveries as I make my way around the Twin Cities. Call it an editor's note as blog entry. This week: An evening at the JoyFace Poetry and Arts Collective's pop-up celebration, the Full Blast Bliss Reading and Art Show.