NONPROFIT by KELSEY CIPOLLA
Pushing Art Boundaries in the Midwest. Charlotte Street Foundation wants Kansas Citians to get outside of the box with art – whether they’re artists or simply patrons. “Here at Charlotte Street, we want to be artist driven,” explains Marketing and Communications Manager Mason Kilpatrick. “We hear and get so many wild, visionary ideas from these young artists who have a hard time finding places to try their ideas out in because they’re so new or foreign to the Kansas City community. So what we do is we provide them the resources that they need to get it done, whether that be cash, free space, technology, or connections to help them out.” The organization was founded in 1997 by David Hughes Jr. to support emerging local artists creating challenging, contemporary work. Charlotte Street facilitates venues that
artists can use for free, paying them to produce shows and offering them to the community for free to remove the financial barrier associated with experimental works for both artists and audiences. “We believe in the beauty of challenging yourself in any sense or sphere, not even just within the arts,” Kilpatrick explains. Kansas City has developed a strong arts culture over the years, he says, but by offering support for up-and-coming talents, Charlotte Street hopes to keep innovators in the Kansas City community. “One thing in the past that Kansas City always had to compete with is that we’re in the Midwest, so we have this negative connotation of being a flyover state,” Kilpatrick says. “We don’t have the reputation, or quite frankly, the
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