Listen: It's 2011! And what do people like to do most for the first few weeks of a new year? Look back at the last year and pick out highlights. We've already done that with music and we'll soon be doing that with Milwaukee music, so I thought I'd take the week before our next campaign kicks off to feature some highlights from our community stories from 2010.
There have been a huge number of characters, stories, and communities on the air this past year (I did a rough tally of the number of pieces I've produced in 2010 and came up with a number around 400) and the year was kicked off with our arts and culture campaign -- Make Milwaukee.
For Make Milwaukee, we essentially handed over the car keys to Milwaukee's arts community itself. We choose 8 tour guides who then curated a week of pieces for us, introducing us to what gets them most excited in Milwaukee's arts community.
During our week with Zulay Oskay from Latino Arts Inc., she introduced us to their youth string players -- when the group came together around me to play an impromptu concert, I probably had the biggest smile of the year on my face. Check it out:
General artsman Mike Brenner had a great theme for his week -- artists who live and work in Milwaukee but could be working anywhere. Fred Gillich, a general renaissance man who's responsible for the "Too Much Rock For One Hand" design, is a prime example of that. And while our conversation veered in a number of directions, Fred shared a killer story from his youth:
During my week with Julia Taylor from the Greater Milwaukee Committee, she brought us to the Milwaukee Art Museum to get a very special guided tour of Street Seen, a temporary photography exhibit in the Calatrava. MAM curator Lisa Hostetler gives us a madcap tour:
Finally, Richard Newman of the Hinterlands talks about a Velvet Underground song. I'm not sure what it is about this piece -- it's not particularly profound or complex -- but it has a special spot in my heart:
And to be fair, there were a huge number of pieces I could have picked -- I just wanted to share a few pieces that I remember particularly fondly. And come back tomorrow for some highlights from the Neighborhood Project!