The 2012 Summer Olympics start July 27 in London and Kansas City can be proud to play a big hand in the the almost month long global sporting event.
You may not know this, but London’s Olympic Stadium is designed by Populous, the sports architecture firm, with its world headquarters in the River Market right here in Kansas City. More than a hundred architects with Populous, which changed its name from HOK Sport in 2009, worked on the stadium design. The company has offices in London and around the world.
We sat down with Populous Senior Principal Scott Radecic to talk about how this local sports architecture firm is playing such an integral part in the London games and innovative sports venues around the globe.
Finally this week, we welcome Jacqueline Chanda to the show. Don’t recognize that name? She’s the new head of the Kansas City Art Institute that has been making news of late and not just because it is eyeing up plans to open a downtown location.
She’s the 23rd President of Kansas City’s venerable art school and she took time out of her busy schedule to sit down with Randy Mason.
A new season of live theater is about to get underway at Starlight Theatre. The Swope Park theater with its iconic towers has been entertaining Kansas Citians under the stars for more than 60 years.
Starlight is one of only three outdoor theatres of its size and type still operational in the United States. The Muny in St. Louis and Wolf Trap in Vienna, Virginia are the others. With the curtain about to rise on another season of top Broadway shows and big name concert performers, we caught up with Starlight’s man in charge, Denton Yockey.
The 2012 Concert Season is also filling up with artists such as Barry Manilow, James Taylor, Crosby, Stills & Nash, My Morning Jacket, Band of Horses, Phish, B.B. King, Il Divo and many, many more.
Welcome to this first Local Show of this brand New Year. If you thought the fight over what so many now refer to as Obamacare was over, it’s not. It has simply moved to state capitals.
While the Supreme Court upheld most of the Affordable Care Act, it left up to states whether to expand Medicaid. Medicaid Expansion is going to be one of the most contentious issues lawmakers wrestle with in Topeka and Jefferson City as they prepare to start new legislative sessions in both states.
It’s one of those issues that gets complicated fast. In this report from Sam Zeff, we try to make sense of it all, by picking apart what’s at stake so we can better understand the arguments on both sides. KCPT’s reporting on healthcare issues is funded in part by a grant from the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City.
Production support provided by:
Majestic Rhinos, LLC
film & digital moving pictures www.MajesticRhinos.com
It is more than two and a half years since Congress passed and the President signed the Affordable Care Act. And it has been a good three months now since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the federal healthcare law. This week, The Local Show goes on location at the Kauffman Foundation for a conversation with regional health leaders to get a status report on how Kansas and Missouri are implementing these reforms and how the law is impacting small business owners, the uninsured, college students and those with pre-existing medical conditions.
It’s complicated…head scratching stuff. Do you know what a state health insurance exchange is? It’s one of the basic questions we get to the bottom of in this program.
Also, a quick reality check on the Affordable Care Act. Did you Know that while many of its most controversial provisions don’t go into effect until 2014, you can keep your college age kids on your health insurance plan until their 26. That is in effect now. And insurers are no longer allowed to charge women more than men simply because of their gender. Plus, insurance companies can no longer charge or require a co-pay for over 60 preventative care services.
Currently, 48 million Americans don’t have health insurance. The Affordable Care Act is supposed to dramatically diminish that number by providing, finally in this country, an affordable option for most Americans through the creation of new insurance pools managed by the states where people could get coverage at a reasonable price.
States are to start enrolling patients starting next year so that by 2014 they would be covered by health insurance, but as of now, only 15 states have established those so called “state health exchanges” and Kansas and Missouri are not among them.
In Missouri, there’s a statewide issue on the ballot November 6th that, if approved by voters, would block the governor or any Missouri agency from creating a state health exchange without approval from voters or the legislature.
In Kansas, Governor Brownback has chosen not to work towards establishing an exchange until the results of the Presidential election are known.
The panelists for this discussion include:
Jay Anghoff, Regional Director
U.S. Health Department
Andrea Routh, Executive Director
Missouri Health Advocacy Alliance
Sheldon Weisgrau, Director
Health Reform Resource Project
Ryan Barker, Public Policy Director
Missouri Foundation for Health
You probably don’t realize how much time is spent trying to figure out how to pay for education in Kansas and Missouri.
Did you know for instance, that in Kansas last year, 62 percent of the entire budget went to fund schools and universities? It’s so important that even the courts have got involved setting up one of the most contentious fights in this legislative session.
But should judges be telling lawmakers how much they should be spending in the classroom? As Sam Zeff reports, its an issue you could soon be deciding at the ballot box as the clash over education funding turns into a battle over how the state picks its judges.
Lead funding of KCPT’S reporting of education issues is funded in part by a generous grant from the Kauffman Foundation and additional civic funders.
Production support provided by:
Majestic Rhinos, LLC
film & digital moving pictures www.MajesticRhinos.com
The Kansas City chapter of the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity helped kick-off KCPT’sFreedom Riders outreach events on March 13, 2011 with a screening for local high school students and their parents. The group watched a fifteen minute preview of the upcoming American Experience documentary before students left for a bus tour of historically black universities. During the trip, the students will view and discuss a longer segment of the documentary.
To find out how your group or organization can host a screening of Freedom Riders, please email lfoat@kcpt.org.
Jim Lehrer, executive editor of PBS NEWSHOUR, moderates the first debate. The debate will focus on domestic policy and be divided into six segments of approximately 15 minutes each on topics to be selected by the moderator and announced before the debate. The moderator will open each segment with a question, after which each candidate will have two minutes to respond. The moderator will use the balance of the time in the segment for a discussion of the topic.
He has led Kansas City’s foremost opera company for the past 25 years…now he is exiting the stage.
Evan Luskin has announced that he is retiring as general director of the Lyric Opera…just as the company prepares to move to its new performance space at the Kauffman Center For The Performing Arts. Luskin, the Company’s general director since 1998, will be retiring on June 30, 2012. Mr. Luskin’s retirement will come at the conclusion of the Lyric’s first year of residence in the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, which will open this fall.
A lifelong fan of opera, Mr. Luskin received an MBA with a specialization in Arts Management in 1977 from the State University of New York at Binghamton. He then served as Assistant Director of the Tulsa Opera from 1977 to 1979, Managing Director of the Chattanooga Opera from 1979 to 1982, and Vice President for Finance and Administration of Michigan Opera Theatre from 1982 until coming to Kansas City in 1986. Mr. Luskin joined the Lyric on June 1, 1986 as its managing director, and became general director in 1998. He is looking forward to spending more time with his wife Andrea and his grand children in Topeka and Washington, D.C. He also plans to become involved in volunteer activities with children, take up the piano after a hiatus of many years, and travel.
The Lyric Opera of Kansas City was founded in 1958 by Russell Patterson. In 54 years the Company has produced numerous works including 3 world premiere operas. In the fall of 1998, the Company began performing operas in the original language, a tradition which continues today with all operas being performed in the original language with English subtitles.
On November 4, 2010 the Lyric Opera of Kansas City announced a capital campaign for the renovation of property on 18th and Charlotte in the Kansas City Crossroads Arts District for its new Opera Center.
The Opera Center complex will consist of two buildings: a Production Arts building and an Administrative building with set rental inventory storage. The Production Arts building will include a rehearsal space that will match the footprint of the stage of the Muriel Kauffman Theatre at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. The Production Arts building also will house a full wig, costume and set construction shop and facilities for educational and community outreach programs. Such an integrated and dedicated production facility does not exist in Kansas City; the Company envisions the Production Arts building becoming a resource for other local performing arts companies.
The second building on the property will be adjacent to the Production Arts building. It would provide the Company with set rental inventory storage, parking lots and outside green spaces for the Opera Center, and house the administrative staff.
In the summer of 2011, the production and administrative offices of the Lyric Opera will be moving from its home of 40 years at the Lyric Theatre to a temporary home in downtown Kansas City at 1616 Broadway. The production and administrative offices will move to the headquarters on 18th Street when construction is completed in 2012.
Opera lovers can be fans of the Lyric Opera of Kansas City on Facebook or follow us @kcopera on Twitter.
A new landmark landed on the Kansas City skyline last week. Producer Justin Bond shows you these images of a full-sized vintage DC-3 airplane now permanently mounted on top of the Roasterie Coffee Company just east of Southwest Boulevard on 27th Street. The plane, built in 1943, was used in the Berlin airlift and according to the company would still work today if you just put the engines back in. The DC-3 has been part of The Roasterie’s logo since the local company was founded in 1993.
