The Golden Thyme Coffee Café and the Saint Paul Almanac are pleased to announce the “Soul Sounds Open Mic,” hosted by Tish Jones! The “Soul Sounds Open Mic” series is held every Thursday, with a special pre-performance writing workshop on the first Thursday of each month.
May 22 Feature – RACBD
RACBD is to create a “RONDO RENAISSANCE” on University Ave in St Paul (the Green Line – LRT) from Griggs to Rice Street. We are developing a Historic Rondo Arts, Cultural, and Heritage District to strengthen and expand the African American business community. We want to leverage the legacy and history of the Rondo community to build a distinct business district that draws present visitors and new visitors to existing and new African American owned businesses on the Avenue!
ASANDC’s current work on identifying and supporting the growth of arts and cultural destinations in Saint Paul forms the foundation for this project. This project is a tool to bring alive the idea of utilizing art and culture as a community and economic asset to bring benefits to and opportunities to enhance current African American businesses and promote the growth of new ones on the University Avenue (the Green Line).
There is a strong community consensus that these efforts must be informed by and directly benefit the residents who live in these areas, including the African American community. However, there currently is no plan for economic development efforts to achieve this end. However, the history of Rondo has been identified as a raw material to establish a place-based economic development initiative targeted toward building wealth and jobs. The imminent opening of the light rail on University Avenue, and the interest it is expected to generate in business and real estate development, elevates the urgency of the need for a business plan for guiding economic development of the RACBD.
The event takes place from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Golden Thyme Coffee Café at 921 Selby Avenue (corner of North Milton Street) in Saint Paul. All ages are welcome, and there is no cover charge. Every first Thursday, a writing workshop will be held an hour before the open mic begins, from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.
About Host Tish Jones
Tish Jones is a spoken word artist, writer, educator, organizer, and activist in the Twin Cities. She has worked as a teaching artist with Pillsbury House Theater, Intermedia Arts, Plymouth Christian Youth Center, MacPhail Center for Music, Minneapolis Public Schools (Arts for Academic Achievement), Kulture Klub, and many other arts organizations. She received the 2009 Artist of the Year Award from City Pages and was Female Spoken Word Artist of the Year at the Minnesota Spoken Word Association’s Urban Griots Awards in 2009.
About the Soul Sounds Open Mic
The Soul Sounds Open Mic is a platform for encouraging literacy within the Saint Paul community through leadership, mentoring, and relationship building. Unlike actors and many musicians, writers typically work in isolation, so building and supporting a literary community can be a challenge.
The “open mic” format, together with a featured performer, is designed to foster leadership; encourage connecting opportunities between established, emerging, and amateur writers; and help build, strengthen, and leverage other opportunities for the Saint Paul literary community.
Featured performers are recognized as leaders in the literary arts community and are offered an opportunity to build their own audiences. The “Soul Sounds Open Mic” also provides a space to connect writers who are spoken-word based and writers who are written-word based, within the context of being artists sharing a common literary heritage and practicing their craft in Saint Paul.
The First Thursday workshops before performances will explore specific poetic devices such as alliteration, assonance, metaphor, or specific forms of poetry to investigate when developing a piece. Workshop attendees will be encouraged to share the work created in the workshop at the open mic that follows.
Event Location
The event takes place from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Golden Thyme Coffee Café at 921 Selby Avenue (corner of North Milton Street) in Saint Paul. All ages are welcome, and there is no cover charge. The First Thursday writing workshop is held an hour before the open mic begins, from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.