Arts & Culture
Stories and videos about music, dance, visual and performing arts and film in the Kansas City metro.
Creating a high-tech vending machine, to dispense local art
Chips, Cheetos and peanuts are all things you might expect to find in an airport vending machine. Local art … not so much. But in one vending machine in the Kansas City Airport, you can expect to find locally made art, jewelry, T-shirts and the like. You swipe your credit card and out comes an…
Poet Nikki Giovanni talks space travel, hip-hop and ‘Selma’
Nikki Giovanni — famed and acclaimed poet — doesn’t buy the old adage that great art comes from great suffering. “I think great art comes from great joy,” she said. She pointed to “Selma,” a film about the 1965 march for civil rights from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery, Alabama, headed by Martin Luther King Jr.,…
Seeking unity amid disparity: KC faith leaders initiate ‘Hope Lives’
Pastor Alan Shelby has lived in the Kansas City area his entire life, and he says the KC he has experienced is different from other cities. “Kansas City is kind of a unique community,” he said. “If you go to another large city like Dallas, you have a rich part, you have a poor part….
Producer’s perspective: A Persian-American family balances assimilation with success
On Sunday, February 9th, 2014, the Your Fellow Americans (YFA) team had their first interview with a Persian-American family in the KC metro. Members of the family were asked to talk about their identity and the American Dream. To talk about issues of race and immigration. And boy … did they talk. We got about halfway into our tagline, “race, immigration, and th…” before Kian Shafé broke in with his experience as an immigrant.
Talking about race at a KC barbershop
This week’s Your Fellow Americans conversations lay out some of the toughest issues in today’s society, and reveal a desire to see change for the better. If this makes the conversation occasionally intense, that’s because this group considers the neighborhoods around Troost, and east of Troost, as theirneighborhoods. And if it’s considered a little bold, or silly, for me – a white guy – to walk in Diamond Cuts and ask probing questions, what does that mean for the thousands of adults and children who call Troost home? What does it mean for your fellow Americans? Have a look at these conversations, and let us know.