This week marks Global Entrepreneurship Week in Kansas City as designated by the Kauffman Foundation. While there are around 40 different events across the metro designed to appeal to future entrepreneurs, last Monday at the Kauffman Foundation, two dozen of the area’s top start up businesses pitched their ideas in front of an audience of potential financial partners, mentors, and just plain interested folks. KCPT had its cameras there along with videojournalist Justin Bond.
The Local Show presents a peek at this year’s performance of A Christmas Carol by the Kansas City Rep. For more than 30 years, the Rep’s holiday performance has delighted audiences and has become a family tradition for many. The show has been retooled this year to incorporate more ghostly effects. The Rep’s take on the Charles Dickens classic runs through December 26th.
It was one of the biggest news announcements of the year, but ever since Google picked Kansas City over thousands of other communities to build “an ultra-high speed fiber-optic internet network” there’s been very little more said about the deal.
The newly selected point person for Google in Kansas City declined to appear on The Local Show saying there simply wasn’t enough progress to report on yet. The co-chairs appointed by the Mayors of Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri also said they didn’t have anything substantive to share.
Just recently the Kansas City Star reported that the timeline for connecting the first neighborhoods has been delayed until next summer.
Interestingly, many of the articles about Google are quoting representatives of the social media club of Kansas City to help unpack what this all means. The 2,000 member tech-savvy group has been hosting forums to rev up community interest in the Google project and its potential for Kansas City.
Lisa Qualls and Aaron Deacon from Social Media Club KC discuss some potential uses for the new Google internet service.
Almost a year after they made their first splashy announcement, Google began construction last week on its long-awaited ultrafast Internet service. While the company says they’re now laying fiber in KCK, they declined to say which neighborhoods they would be working in. When they arrive, the one gigabit-per-second Internet connections will offer steady downloads about 100 times faster than most Americans can get in their homes with existing broadband services. In just a moment, we’ll get an update on the project from Mike Burke and Ray Daniels who are leading the Mayors’ Bi-State Google Innovation Team. But first, we wanted to show you how the Kauffman Foundation is now envisioning what a Google future might mean for Kansas City.
Many of you may have been watching the Grammy Awards over the weekend. What you missed in the primetime CBS broadcast is the Grammy Award being presented for Classical Solo Performance. That was among the awards not handed out on TV from the Staples Center. The award went to Prairie Village native and international opera star Joyce DiDonato for her performance Diva Divo. She performs alongside the Kansas City Symphony at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts next month. If you weren’t able to secure a ticket, don’t fret. The performance is being recorded to run nationally on PBS as part of the summer arts series this July. KCPT recently began production on the documentary “Homecoming” which will be featured in the PBS Arts special.
Here’s a behind the scenes look at the making of Diva Divo:
You didn’t get to see them pick up their Grammys during the big prime-time telecast over the weekend, but congratulations are in order for the Kansas City Chorale who snagged two Grammys in Sunday’s pre-show awards.
The Chorale’s 2012 album, “Life & Breath: Choral Works By René Clausen,” received Grammy Awards for Best Choral Performance and Best Engineered Classical record.
Here is a look at the big announcement:
Here’s more info about the winning album:
If you head along I-70 through Wyandotte County in Kansas, you’ve no doubt seen signs for the National Agricultural Hall of Fame. It’s been there for more than 50 years thanks to a federal charter by an act of the 86th Congress and signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on August 31, 1960. Chances are good that you may never have stopped inside. In fact, attendance in recent years has been so poor that the attraction, which celebrates agriculture and the American farmer, was almost shuttered three years ago. Now a new board of directors is breathing new life into the museum about two miles west of the Kansas Speedway in Bonner Springs. Producer Justin Bond takes us on a tour.
In 2002, the Missouri Department of Conservation opened a unique facility on Troost Avenue in the heart of Kansas City designed to get young people in urban neighborhoods more connected with nature and the outdoors.
This week, The Anita Gorman Discovery Center is celebrating its 10th anniversary. For many visitors, The Discovery Center at 47th and Troost continues to be their first introduction to nature.
Surrounded by 10 acres of gardens, forests, wetlands and prairie, the Discovery Center beckons urban residents to visit and to learn. Randy Mason spoke with Stacey Davis, the center’s manager.
With another season of destructive storms having already begun, and the one year anniversary of the EF5 tornado that tore though Joplin, MO coming up on May 22, communities are on alert.
This Friday also marks five years since a devastating EF5 tornado leveled the small town of Greensburg, KS, destroying homes, businesses and lives- but not spirits. Even in the face of such a disaster and tragedy, a community bonded together and with bravery and resilience, and have worked to rebuild their town bigger and better through the use of innovative green technologies.
The Local Show screens a segment from the AARP’s television program, My Generation, which looks at how Greensburg has used green energy- recycled materials and renewable power sources – to rebuild itself and serve as an inspiring model for towns everywhere.
Local architecture firm BNIM and its Founding Principal Bob Berkebile are renowned as experts and pioneers in the sustainability and green design movement. Berkebile, a winner of the 2009 Heinz Award from Theresa Heinz and the Heinz Family Foundation for his role in promoting green building design and for his commitment and action towards restoring social, economic and environmental vitality to America’s communities through sustainable architecture and planning, sits down with Randy Mason to discuss lessons to be learned from places like Greensburg, KS and post-Katrina New Orleans, Kansas City’s Green Impact Zone, and the important benefits of green building design.
Finally this week we take a modern spin on a vintage art form. Head with us inside the craft-tastic world of Hammerpress, a letterpress, print and design studio in Kansas City’s crossroads neighborhood.
Producer Tony Ladesich captures artist Brady Vest’s handiwork as he brings us into the meticiculous and exacting world of typography.
You can see the work of Hammerpress for yourself this Friday night as part of the Crossroads First Fridays event. Hammerpress is located at 110 Southwest Boulevard in KCMO.
Such Subtle Beauty from Anthony Ladesich on Vimeo.
