This week, in conjunction with KC Studio Magazine, our performARTS Series takes a look at the Charlotte Street Foundation. Named after a house near UMKC where poets, painters and music makers would gather to eat, drink and talk shop, Charlotte Street celebrates turning 15 this year. Randy Mason has more about this unique operation, which through cash awards and other forms of assistance helps the region’s artists do more of what they do best.
The head of PBS was in town last week. Paula Kerger met with top civic leaders and made a keynote address at Union Station inside the boardroom of the Greater Kansas Chamber of Commerce. It’s not everyday we get a visit from the top leader of public television. She stopped by The Local Show with KCPT CEO Kliff Kuehl for a visit with Randy Mason.
Welcome to our first Local Show of the spring. It is always fun to find a story close to home that you’d somehow managed to miss completely. Like this next one about a local attorney and theatre buff named John “Topper” Johntz. Topper and his wife, Linda, have been quietly amassing a world-class art collection which they open up to various visitors from time to time, including us. Randy and Don the Camera Guy Mayberger headed out to Prairie Village to see the amazing art-filled home the couple has occupied since the 1960s.
The New York Times called it one the most unfortunately timed books of 2012. When former Kansas City Star sports columnist Joe Posnanki moved to State College, Pennsylvania to follow what was likely to be the final season in the six decade long career of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, he had no idea he would be walking into one of the biggest news stories of the decade and what turned out to be the final tragic months in Joe Paterno’s life.
Posnanski records his experiences in the controversial new book Paterno which hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list earlier this month.
For decades, he was the man to go to when major public figures or institutions in our metro had a really bad PR problem and they needed crisis management. If they wanted the best, they turned to David Westbrook, founder and CEO of the Corporate Communications Group.
Westbrook hit the top of his game and was named PR Executive of the
year in Kansas City. He is highly sought after on a slew of corporate
and nonprofit boards. For fun, he drives race cars. By the
way, he is totally blind. Local Show guest host Cynthia Wheeler Linden sat down with Westbrook who is now Vice President of Strategy and Innovations at Children’s Mercy Hospital.
How much thought do you give to the design of your local library? When is the last time you even went to your local library? Worried about declining attendance, the Mid-Continent Public Library system is reinventing what your neighborhood library looks like and offers.
At its newest branch called Woodneath, near fast growing Liberty, an 1850′s historic home is being re-purposed as a writing lab and self publishing center for the future JK Rowlings. The house is just part of the new project. Library director Steve Potter took Nick Haines on a hard hat tour of the library which is scheduled to open this summer.
We begin this week with a question: Which is the largest institution of higher education in our bi-state area? Is it KU or MU? You might be surprised to learn that it’s actually neither.
With more than 50,000 students enrolled in credit and continuing education classes each semester, Johnson County Community College is now the largest institution of higher education in either Kansas or Missouri.
And after 5 years at the helm, JCCC’s President Terry Calaway has announced he is retiring. Along with increased enrollment, Calaway is credited with bringing a lot of novel programs to JCCC which is consistently ranked as one of the best community colleges in the country.
People no doubt have heard about the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art which was added during his watch, but the college is also getting national attention for its culinary program which will open its own culinary academy and innovative demonstration kitchen next year. Dr Calaway sat down for a conversation with Nick Haines.
Brian Hansel, CEO, Smith Electric
Nick Haines interviews Bryan Hansel, whose Kansas City-based company, Smith Electric, is a leading manufacturer of electric trucks.
Inside Smith Electric:
President Obama’s speech at Smith Electric on July 8, 2010
Many of us, even if it was when we were just a kid, dreamt of inventing something that would make us rich and famous.
We may even have tinkered in our basements or garages on building a prototype that we were just so sure, that if was discovered by the right person, could be the next best thing.
That would describe our first guests on this week’s Local Show. They are Kansas City brothers Brian and Kevin Fleming who have spent their lives messing with consumer inventions with limited success. But just recently, they got their shot at taking their invention national on the primetime ABC entrepreneurial reality show Shark Tank.
Next Tuesday night at 9 p.m., PBS joins forces for the first time ever with the phenomenon known as TED to build a whole show out of talks centered around one topic—education.
Randy Mason sits down to discuss this year’s TEDxKC with the event’s organizer, Mike Lundgren. Tickets for the event will go on sale in July. TEDxKC 2013 will be held at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts on August 20 and the theme will be Impossible: We Can Change The World If We Defy The Impossible. If all goes as planned, this will be the biggest TED event ever, knocking the event at the Sydney Opera House from the top spot.
Tickets will certainly sell out quickly, but KCPT will once again be taping the event for broadcast. Stay tuned for more details.
