The Internship Movie and Mixer
With Hello West Michigan and HR Collaborative
Sponsored by Steelcase

June 12
Tickets are $25 and include appetizers, one drink ticket, and a small soda and popcorn for the show.
Click here to register.

Join Hello West Michigan and HR Collaborative for a night of networking and entertainment as we screen the new movie The Internship, starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson.

What:

If it has to do with funny...you will find it at LaughFest - a 10-day festival of stand-up comedy, improv, live shows, films, authors, community showcases (featuring you!) and a variety of other seriously funny stuff. All proceeds will benefit the cancer, grief and support programs offered through Gilda's Club Grand Rapids.

Who:

LaughFest will feature both national headliners like Whoopi Goldberg, Martin Short, Kevin Nealon, Rodney Carrington, Jim Gaffigan, Mike Epps, Sinbad, Marc Maron (and many more!) as well as regional and local talent. Check out the complete list at LaughFestgr.org

Grand Rapids is an impressive city. Despite its modest size, it has plenty to offer in terms of attractions, both mainstream and green.

The 123,000-square-foot Grand Rapids Art Museum is the world's first LEED-certified art museum, and offers a family learning center.

ArtPrize is this spectacle -- this dawning, slowly encroaching season, now an integral part of Grand Rapids' autumn. A casual walk for a Grand Rapidian to the bank or a local watering hole reveals a statue that wasn't there before, a mural slowly spreading across the side of a building, a painted piano on a street corner, a pop-up shop in what used to be an unused space. And then it happens. Crowds of people, spilling through crosswalks, strollers everywhere, parties, queues, non-stop discussion, every update of Facebook or Twitter revealing more opinions over individual pieces, crowds, votes and ruckus.

ArtPrize doesn't just appear. It's carefully planned by a team of masterminds, who have successfully turned ArtPrize from an idea into a successful reality for the second year in a row.

Last year, CEOs for Cities President Carol Coletta published an article in Good entitled, "What an ArtPrize in Michigan Can Teach Us About Building Better Cities." The article highlighted multiple lessons Coletta felt could be learned from the ArtPrize model including "the value of giving people permission to be entrepreneurial," "rapid prototyping," and decentralization.

Some months back, local music impresario Jon Pataky (Wonder Caverns, The Mighty Narwhale) had a Facebook status stating, "Call me crazy, but I'm starting to see something that resembles a Grand Rapids music scene."  

While it is hard to ignore the fact that there has always been a local music "scene" in Grand Rapids, it is easy to see that better, and maybe even amazing, times are on the horizon. New bands are forming on what seems like almost a daily basis. Venues that will cater to a wider variety of music tastes are in the process of opening. It already seems as though there are multiple shows to attend every night of the week all over the city, and local music fans are flocking to them. Top all of this off with a large three-day music festival that at least has the potential to turn Grand Rapids into a music and cultural mecca of the Midwest, and people have good reason to be excited.

Grand Rapids' Midtown Neighborhood Association believes its Fulton Street Farmers Market is fertile ground for growing the 90-year-old open-air market into a $3 million all-season marketplace. The group unveiled its proposed plans for a LEED-certified market this week at a public event.

A walk-in wine cellar greets diners as soon as they walk through the doors of Theodore's, but the aroma of gourmet dishes for vegans and meat-lovers alike is what beckons them in to enjoy an intimate dining experience.

Music can start the conversations that bring a community together. Leaders of the I.D.E.A. Association are convinced of that and are putting it to the test over the July 4 holiday weekend.

On a recent summer afternoon, as they sit inside Water Street coffee shop in downtown Kalamazoo, I.D.E.A. Association founders Matthew Lechel and Mark Thompson recap the genesis of their nonprofit organization and their plans for the first Boiling Pot Festival, an event to gather people through music and art and ask them to help find solutions to the issues that plague society.