Max Musicant really just wants small, good things to happen. 

He drills down to details: mobile seating, flowerpots, tables for an indoor public market or Ping Pong.

As a placemaker for hire, Max thrills to enliven places where the public and private meet.  “My personal theory of change,” he offers, “is to create more humane and inviting spaces for all.”

“I’m a ‘Say yes, let’s see what the possibilities are,’ type of person,” says MaryLynn Pulscher, Environmental Education Manager at the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board.  She’s a risk pusher, too, given parental focus on a “Be careful, don’t get hurt” ethos so prevalent these days.

It’s November, and most gardens in the northland are slowing down and shutting down.   Frost has shriveled the tender plants.  Gardeners are putting away their tools, ready to straighten up, breathe, and rest until spring.

For Peter Vang, slowing down sounds good, but it is a pace unfamiliar to the young leader.  He has the big picture in mind, and a process that takes planning, preparation, adaptation, and hustle – year round.  If there is time left (and he makes sure there is) then there is time to celebrate.

Syd Beane (Flandreau Santee Sioux) lives the storytelling element of placemaking.

He is a filmmaker, historian, documentarian and Dakota elder in the Twin Cities. Central to his story is Mni Sota, the place the Dakota call the “Land Where the Water Reflects the Clouds.” As a storyteller, Syd draws the energy of his Dakota ancestors and explores how place elicits individual and collective value.

For someone who spends a lot of time thinking about heat, John Pederson is a pretty chill guy. 

If you have the chance to join him for a few rounds of sauna, you just might succumb to that calm and well-being yourself. 

Some of us have experienced sauna at some point in our lives: maybe at a spa, or alongside a hotel pool deck, or in lodge with a Scandinavian sounding name in the north woods. For most of us, it is not a common occurrence; not something we consider part of a daily regimen of self-care, like brushing our teeth or taking our morning coffee.

What would you do if your favorite thing, the thing you loved to do, were not accessible to you anymore?

What if there were simple hardware solutions to ease a disability? 

What about strangers?

What about serendipity? 

Caito Bowles-Roth could easily get tripped up in questions.  Instead, she pedals answers:  on three wheels, with a hand crank. 

When it’s hot, community kicks it in the kitchen.

Family, too.  There is Cousin Pinky’s braised oxtail with butter beans, and Grandma Sylvia “Baby Lue” Jones’ Kingston style jerk chicken.  

Tomme Beevas is throwing a party, and everyone is invited.

Wrestling the public realm is not easy exercise.  Just ask Morgan Luzier. 

A busy entrepreneur, running a fitness studio and keeping her clients healthy and on the move, Morgan had a thousand reasons NOT to get involved in the fate of a parking lot at the LynLake intersection.  “Think of everything you could spend your time on – feeding the hungry, wage equality, police relations.  Why this?” 

“We’re the guys who were fascinated in trains when we were little kids and didn’t get over it.” 

Aaron Isaacs definitely is NOT over trains:  not the cane-backed benches in the car, not the clickety-clack of the wheels over the rails, not the friendly conductor waving riders aboard. 

Princess Titus is not one for barriers:  not racial, not cultural, not economic.

Not even a strong fence separating her from Miss Little Bit’s South Side Chicago garden could keep Princess from doing what she had to do.  On the Fridays of her childhood, that meant nimble climbing to contribute to the neighborhood meal.  

“My mother had me jump that fence to grab green tomatoes,” Princess remembers. “Miss Little Bit said we were always welcome, and she gladly shared her garden. I know why: because with those tomatoes, we got to cook and eat and talk together.”

“When I first ran for public office, re-districting had given Minneapolis’ 8th Ward a new geography.  I heard people talking about 38th Street where it meets Chicago Avenue, saying ‘We want this to be your number one priority,’” former Council Member Elizabeth Glidden says. 

It was a new emphasis from the constituency.   “Having a strong message from the community like that helps you marshal attention, helps you guide a specific push.”

Wing Young Huie is street photographer.

Wing’s images are untitled.  He welcomes ambiguity and says that even if the location of a photograph is identifiable, context is interpretive.  “For me,” Wing says, “the photograph is the way to get to the story.  I don’t have to say what the meaning is, what my process is.  The photograph does the work.  It asks: ‘ What do you see?”

By the age of 17, Monica Hurtado knew she would become a doctor.

Monica’s training and lived experience has taught her that “health” does not equal absence of illness. Social determinants - including income levels, access to housing, food, education, public safety, transit, leisure, and joy - greatly impact health outcomes.  “Advantage or disadvantage makes a difference,” she says.  “I work for overall well-being. Healing is central to the work, and to be effective we must all come together for change.”

For downtown dogs, outside life on a leash is the deal.

For humans in Minneapolis, exercising a downtown dog is a little freer – and friendlier – if owner and pooch can find their way to Loring Park. 

10 years ago, Ray Harris harnessed a growing trend and unleashed a big idea in the public park right outside his door in a small, but impactful way. 

Dan Collison looks a little like a blackjack dealer as he lays his business cards down on the table.

Today, he lays out four cards.  Each denotes a different role and association; each relates to the built environment, economic development, and efforts to encourage “human flourishing” in downtown’s East Town neighborhood.

Some might say Dan is a street preacher for placemaking, and they wouldn’t be half wrong. Three of Dan’s business cards describe him directing partnerships, or developing business, or administering leadership at three distinct downtown organizations. One defines his actual ministering: that card reads, “First Covenant Church, Minneapolis.Lead Pastor.”

For Sook Jin Ong, the future is here.

By day, Sook Jin directs the University of Minnesota’s Future Services Institute, a department at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs that focuses on improving the delivery of human services: social work, population health, housing, food security, employment, public safety and the like, across public and nonprofit sectors. Her clients’ work affects how each of us, and our neighbors, survive or thrive across community in the places we call home.

If you are an early morning riser, and have heard the birds as they begin their singing for the day, you know polyphony.

One voice, than many; a singular melody entwined with others that rises and repeats, falls and swells again; collective strength equaling more than the tally of singular songs. 

Rachel Ries, a singer/songwriter known professionally as Her Crooked Heart, travels the country touting her own clear voice.  As she writes and collaborates, Rachel has also developed a keen ear to the songs of others. 

Weighing in at a modest 4.2 acres, Minneapolis’ Commons Park is small compared to downtown parks in other cities, but aims to fight above its weight.

Amanda Wigen, Director of Programming and Events at The Commons, is similarly scrappy and her work shapes the park through programming that packs a punch.

Her approach is important since the nascent park and its conservancy model are in start-up mode in their first full year of operation (2018), and “lean” is the name of the game. 

How to capture the essence of a man who has lived many lives in his 57 years?

Robert Lilligren is the executive director of NACDI, Minneapolis’ Native American Community Development Institute in the heart of the densest concentration of Native urban dwellers in the country. 

In his daily interactions and vision setting, Robert wears many hats, relying his broad professional experiences across sectors.  Part arts advocate, part number cruncher, part policy wonk, part cheerleader, he instigates, nurtures, and celebrates the success of stakeholders:  “This is the community’s vision.  This is about building capacity.” 

“It was meant to be,” says Deb Loch, Head Brewer and Co-Founder of Urban Growler.  Her partner, Co-Head Honcho, Jill Pavlak, nods. 

And it was meant to be beer, said the universe. 

Or maybe that pronouncement came from Wonder Woman who appears, on repeat, in cardboard cutout behind the bar.  The Wonder Woman of those kickass red boots and lasso of truth, the Lynda Carter version, circa 1975.  She presides as patron saint of this taproom, and this twosome.

“She’s a force,” smiles Jill.