If you want to accidentally start a performance venue amidst a pandemic, it’s best to start with a barn. Put it outside of the city a few miles where it’s quiet, on four acres of Iowa prairie, most of it pasture for horses, with plenty of places for people to park. That’s how Nathan and […]
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The Coralville Community Food Pantry offers music, poetry and dance in exchange for support fighting food insecurity
Over the last several years, the food insecurity rate in Johnson County was dropping. According to interactive maps from the organization Feeding America, it went from 13.9 percent in 2016 down to 8.2 percent in 2018 and maintained that in 2019. But a projection the site ran for the impacts of COVID-19 predicted a rise […]
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Artist Jordan Weber explores the intersection of climate and racial violence in collaboration with Cedar Rapids museums
Jordan Weber first began meditating when he was a junior in high school, with visions of professional basketball in his future. He read the book Sacred Hoops by long-time NBA player and coach Phil Jackson, which in turn led him to seminal Western practice text Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. “I was extremely lucky to find […]
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Acting power-couple Scot and Marcia Hughes to star in drive-in play from Mirrorbox Theatre
Given the speed with which new theater companies crop up in Eastern Iowa, Scot and Marcia Hughes can perhaps be forgiven for not having shared their talents with absolutely all of them. But the number missing from their resumes is remarkably small. “Since moving here,” Scot said in an email (the couple arrived in Cedar […]
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The world’s in crisis, but poetry is more accessible than ever in Iowa City
“Poetry is somewhere between jazz and bird call and computer code and ornate lacquer box and hot wrought iron and prayer and primal scream,” said Lisa Roberts, founding director of Iowa City Poetry. For seven years, Roberts has collaborated with artists around one of the most prestigious (and arguably elitist) writing capitals in the world […]
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Musicians return to the Gabe’s stage for crowdless concert series No Touching Sessions
There have been some major quarantines in history brought on by plagues — yellow fever, Ebola, infectious tuberculosis and now, COVID-19. There has also been a lot of innovation to come from all that time alone. I was today years old when I found out on MSN.com that Issac Newton developed his theory of gravity […]
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#StayHome: Indigenous Peoples Art Gallery goes virtual during COVID-19
As any discussion of the ongoing pandemic should note, small businesses, organizations and communities have, in many cases, seen more pronounced effects from COVID-19 than their larger counterparts. These entities, not usually included in major media discourse, nevertheless face the same questions as the world at large: How do we transition our pre-COVID lives into […]
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An all-women art exhibition hints at an inclusive future for the Stanley Museum of Art
Only 11 percent of art purchased by major U.S. museums from 2008-18 was created by women, according to a joint investigation by Artnet News and In Other Words. This off-putting statistic suggests that women artists are too often overlooked, and their message ignored. As the University of Iowa builds out its art collection, curators and […]
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‘Thespians can boogie, too’: Riverside Theatre and HomeBrewed team up to support Free Shakespeare
If you’ve attended a fundraiser in the Iowa City area in the last several years, there’s a better-than-average chance that you’ve heard the sounds of HomeBrewed. They’ve played shows for CommUnity’s Project Holiday meal campaign, for Strengthen • Grow • Evolve, for the local chapter of National Alliance on Mental Illness and many other
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‘Kids, let’s face it — they can be a tough audience’: Hancher to kick-off youth programming with Gina Chavez
Musician Gina Chavez is a study in synthesis. In a story familiar to many multi-ethnic Americans, she didn’t always have meaning or identity convenient to her. But she has made a life and a career of creating meaning, of pulling disparate elements in her life into communion with each other. “I didn’t grow up speaking Spanish,” Chavez said
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The new Stanley Museum of Art will serve as ‘a library and a laboratory,’ says its director, bringing art to all majors
Lauren Lessing began serving as the eighth director of the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art in July 2018, and less than nine months later, presided over the ceremonial groundbreaking of the new site for the museum. UI’s renowned art collection (arguably one of the top university collections in the United States) was displaced by
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Fields of Yogis promises growth and connection at fourth annual yoga festival
Fields of Yogis was designed to cultivate a sense of community for yoga specific to Iowa, as the name indicates. The event’s motto, “Choose How You Grow,” similarly combines the agricultural context of yoga in Iowa with the sense of self-determination and an orientation toward wellness that is important in the practice of yoga overall.
