Creative Leadership : Buzz

The American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis recently announced its June 30 grand reopening with the addition of the Nelson Cultural Center.

The expansion and other campus enhancements will get a visit from Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia in October. During their Minnesota trip, the king and queen will also go to the Swedish-founded Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, which will be celebrating its 150th anniversary.

“The Nelson Cultural Center’s innovative design and handcrafted, Swedish-inspired detailing embrace Nordic values--including respect for nature and quality materials, as well as for the environment, through energy conservation and sustainable building practices,” the statement from the American Swedish Institute reads.  

The Knight Blog features a couple of its local grantees who were recently profiled by Minnesota Monthly. 

Dana Nelson of GiveMN and Laura Zabel of Springboard for the Arts are Minnesotans who are “changing the way we think about the world--and its future," according to the magazine story.

Nelson is giving philanthropy a new twist while Zabel is empowering artists, it states.

A recent posting from The Atlantic highlights an interesting crime-fighting strategy at work in Minneapolis.

Classical music is being played at various light rail stations to “dissuade criminal behavior,” it states.

The strategy, which the city began using last summer, is based on the idea that “potential criminals find classical music so detestable that they won’t hang around the station long enough to realize their criminal potential: 'If it encourages some people to wander away because it's not their favorite type of music, I guess that's okay,'" said Acting Transit Police Chief A.J. Olson.”  

Minneapolis took inspiration from Portland. “Oregon lawmakers liked the tactic so much." says the Atlantic, "that they proposed a bill that would require light rail stations in high-crime areas to play classical music as long as they remain open.”

The recent premiere of the Travel Channel’s new show, “Bizarre Foods America,” hosted by local chef Andrew Zimmern, featured a number of outstanding local delicacies.

In his column in Mpls. St. Paul Magazine, Zimmern lists some of the distinctive places to which the new show goes, including area farms, streams, and lakes and a Hmong market.

The Minneapolis restaurant Piccolo offers a “lesson in meat glue 101” from Doug Flicker; a local VFW hall has a hot-dish cook-off, and at Haute Dish in Minneapolis, Zimmern pitches in with offal hot dish. St. Paul's The Blue Door Pub also makes it into the show.

Zimmern adds, “I couldn’t be prouder of the show, our local crew, the fans who came out to watch, and the local stars [who] opened up their farms and restaurants to us. “  

A January posting from Publishers Weekly praises Minneapolis' Coffee House Press for its recent accomplishments amid a change in leadership.

Two of its fall 2011 releases, Leaving the Atocha Station, a first novel by Ben Lerner and Song I Sing, a debut poetry collection from Bao Phi, “have been published to critical acclaim in major media publications," it states.

“Leaving the Atocha Station,” PW writes, “landed with the sort of bang that most book publishers can only dream of,” with a lengthy and positive review in the New Yorker.

It’s also been talked about in the New York Review of Books, National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air” show, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Foreign Policy.

In a regular column in USA Today called, The Pop Traveler, local writer Amanda Fretheim Gates makes a list of top 10 reasons to visit the Twin Cities.

The iconic First Avenue, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Chain of Lakes, skyways, Hennepin Theatre District, local brews, public art, and Jucy Lucy hamburgers are just some of the things that she enjoys about the area.

From her home, “I'm never more than 15 minutes from a play, museum, park, lake, farm-fresh dining, and tax-free shopping,” she says.

In general, “The people are friendly, the cultural offerings stellar, the sports exciting (if not depressing at times) and the outdoors flourishing all year round,” she writes.

The Atlantic magazine features Kopplin’s Coffee in St. Paul in a compilation of 35 top-notch neighborhood coffeehouses around the country.

The article starts out with a point about coffee trends in the U.S.: “Despite, or perhaps because of, the rapid expansion of Starbucks and other standardized chains, small coffeehouses are flourishing,” and Americans are getting more sophisticated in their coffee tastes.

Kopplin’s Coffee in St. Paul stands out in part because it’s “truly about supporting the local community,” with milk from locally raised grass-fed cows and Fair Trade and organic coffee.

The magazine also suggests stopping by Rustica Bakery in Minneapolis for a pastry.

Recently the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) released a list of the top 10 states for green building through the internationally recognized LEED standards.

The results are based on U.S. Census data from last year.

Minnesota rounds out the list that’s topped by the District of Columbia.  

The LEED Platinum Marquette Plaza in Minneapolis is named in a prepared statement about the list.

For National Geographic Traveler, the St. Paul Winter Carnival takes fourth-place in the world when it comes to wintry festivals. 

Anchorage's  Fur Rendezvous topped the list.

The Traveler's writeup of the event explains how Winter Carnival began when a reporter wrote that St. Paul was "another Siberia, unfit for human habitation in the winter." Beginning in 1886, St. Paulites asserted their local pride with the winter festivities.

Minneapolis is among the top cities in the nation when it comes to charitable giving and volunteering, according to Scarborough Research.
 
The firm measures numerous trends throughout the year, including shopping patterns and media behaviors, and ranks the results by city.
 
For its charitable giving study, it tracked donations and volunteer work from the past year.
 
Minneapolis was ranked second, after Salt Lake City, in both charitable giving and volunteerism. In a previous Scarborough study, done in 2008, Minneapolis was ranked third in the nation for charitable donations.

The Huffington Post recently highlighted the historic election of Democrat Susan Allen, an openly lesbian Native American, to the Minnesota legislature.

While campaigning, Allen had publicly stated, "I reflect the great diversity of our district, as a Native American woman and a member of the LGBT community, and hope to bring this important voice to the state capital to offer more balanced, representative contributions and input," according to the story.

Tiffany Muller, who led political operations for Allen, is quoted, saying, ”This is our first win of 2012, and it’s a fantastic way to start off what will be a very exciting year for LGBT candidates.”
 

Downtown St. Paul’s Wells Fargo WinterSkate rink will serve as the backdrop for NBC's live coverage of “Hockey Day in America,” the Pioneer Press reports.

The broadcast features four National Hockey League games on Feb. 19, including the Minnesota Wild vs. the Boston Bruins at the Xcel Energy Center.

“With ice at many lakes too soft to skate on, and temperatures unseasonably pleasant, more than 20,000 skaters have headed to downtown St. Paul for free ice time,” the story states. 

The choice of the rink as a broadcast backdrop means that it will be open an extra two weeks this year. 

The Huffington Post recently featured a story by local writer Jay Walljasper titled, “How to Boost Biking and Walking in Your Town: Lessons From Minneapolis.”  

Walljasper cites numerous reports that show Minneapolis has become a top biking city.

He attributes it in part to various street improvements “including more bike lanes and special bicycle-and-pedestrian boulevards -- installed around town in the past year as part of the Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Project.”

Joan Pasiuk, who heads Bike Walk Twin Cities, is quoted, saying, "The goal of this project from Congress was to shift some trips, and this data shows it is happening," adding, "The implications for overall health and transportation access are outcomes the community will realize from the numbers we're reporting."

Getting accurate bike and pedestrian counts is critical in terms of influencing transportation policies, according to Pasiuk.

Publishing industry magazine Publishers Weekly recently highlighted the collaboration of three Twin Cities literary presses on a distinctive literacy promotion effort.
 
Coffee House Press, Milkweed Editions, and Graywolf Press are partnering with a Wisconsin literacy group called Little Free Library, and the Walker Art Center, to produce "little free libraries" of books that are ideal for coffee shops or restaurants, the magazine noted.
 
If the promotion is successful, the presses may make books more widely available. The non-profit literacy group estimates that there are between 200 to 300 of their little free libraries maintained around the world, with the majority in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Northside Achievement Zone, a joint initiative of the public schools and social service agencies in North Minneapolis aimed at boosting the academic achievement of thousands of neighborhood kids, has received a $28 million implementation grant from the federal government, Minnesota Public Radio reports.

The money, from the Department of Education's Promise Neighborhood Program, will help the NAZ scale up its school-and-community work, which focuses on helping both students and families via "connectors"--mentor/coach/facilitators who assist students with schoolwork and families with issues like housing. The program is modeled on the Harlem Children's Zone in New York City.

According to NAZ CEO Sondra Samuels, who is quoted in the piece, the grant will allow the program, which currently serves 150 families, to grow exponentially. "We have about 2,000 families and about 5,500 children that make up the Northside Achievement Zone," she says, "and we want to get to as many families and kids as we possibly can."