The DJ Takeover sponsored by Level Up is a program for listeners to discover their favorite artist's favorite artists, working to foster connection to the music and makers inside and outside our city. For the entire hour, we go down the rabbit hole of stories from their past, experiences of the present and goals for the future.
Cactus Club’s permission to think outside the box is making another world possible.
Owner/operator Kelsey Kaufmann sat next to me in the studio as the music venue and community arts space prepared for another installment of their annual fall festival, Beet Street. One of the things that sets it apart from others in the area is that in addition to festival staples of food, beverage and entertainment, Beet Street goes a step further.
“You can’t have good art without community causes,” Kaufmann told me. “And if you’re just doing community organizing without multimedia art, it leads to quick burnout.”
Every year, Beet Street aims to connect folks with community causes, prioritizing the presence of a wide variety of local organizations, including environmental-justice organizers, art collectives, community-health clinics, harm-reduction advocates, abolitionists, voter registrants, LGBTQ+ resources and more.
“Right now, it's really important to have spaces to uplift each other,” Cactus Club booking manager Ellee Grim added. “And Beet Street is a cool spot [in] that we get to collaborate with a lot of the city and give people a place to feel seen and heard.”
Within the nationally renowned and independently owned live music venue is the growing nonprofit Cactus+. Beet Street captures what the extension stands for, uplifting the intersections of intergenerational art and community building.
Kaufmann centers it by posing a question that hovers above all the work they do: “How do we get intergenerational folks together in a physical environment to learn from one another in an era of so much isolation and pervasive loneliness?”
Cactus+ formalized the vision for the club’s multimedia-arts programming that wasn’t initially generating income. But Kaufmann believed the work needed to be done — artist residencies, film screenings, book clubs, harm-reduction education, arts workshops and more.
How and why did all of these programs come to fruition in what was traditionally a venue focused on live music? “What Cactus tries to encourage is permission giving,” Kaufmann said. “There’s so much that can come out of just having space and creating space and saying, ‘Yes, you should try that,’ or, ‘Yes, you’re curious about that, that’s amazing, green light, let’s see where we can take it.’”
Kaufmann bought Cactus Club a month before the world shut down due to the pandemic. As they found their footing, there was an overarching thirst for connection and collaboration. Six years later, the sentiment has helped grow the space into a shapeshifting resource that responds to the needs of its patrons and the community at large.
It all goes back to Cactus Club believing that another world is possible. One of the first steps in getting there is empowering others to allow their intrinsic strengths, talents, ideas, dreams and efforts to reach their full potential. Those people can look to the club as proof that when we strive to find purpose in our dreams, we can affect change in our lives, our neighbors’ lives and the world we call home.
DJ Takeover: Cactus Club playlist
- CFCF, nuum, Seren Forever, “Kiss Me”
- Automatic, “Black Box”
- sero, “Your Sign”
- San-Z, HOYO-Mix, han.irl <3, “chaos.exe”
- Zed Kenzo, “Wild One”
- W.I.T.C.H., “You Better Know”
- Tyler Band, “Shopping Center”
- Ninajirachi, “iPod Touch”
- After, “Outbound”
