If Obama ignited this fire to unite, then the recession is keeping it hot in 2009. As historian and Great Depression expert Robert McElvaine put it on PBS’s Newshour earlier this year: “Community-oriented values tend to come out during tough times.” This civic-minded ethos, we’re happy to report, has trickled down to the Twin Cities art scene, which has spent much of the year finding interesting—and yes, sexy—new ways to rally around art. Take the (28) West Bank Social Center, an indie community arts center of sorts that opened last June above the Nomad World Pub in Minneapolis’s Cedar-Riverside neighborhood. Like a clubhouse minus the secret knock, this free-wheelin’ venue offers gratis Wi-Fi and coffee for anyone who stops by (a few wandering creatives use it as their makeshift office), and often calls on the public to curate its events, which have varied from group naptime sessions set to European art cinema, to a discussion about death and memorial tattooing featuring death and dying expert John E. Troyer and tattoo artist Awen Briem.
— West Bank Social Center featured in Metro Magazine’s Metro 100
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