There are thousands of us in Minneapolis. Some work in studios in converted industrial buildings. Some work in back bedrooms in their homes. Some work in downtown offices. Some write. Some create fine art. Others perform. We’re “creatives,” and we’re a sizable economic engine.

So says the 2018 Minneapolis Creative Index, published by the Minneapolis Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy (ACCE). It’s the third year the study has been conducted and it includes craft artists as well as advertising managers and much in between. The study looked at facts and figures collected in 2016.

“I’m going to end this speech before I freeze to death,” laughed Rep. Ilhan Omar, on the steps of the Minnesota State Capitol, Saturday, Jan. 19. Despite single-digit temperatures, an estimated crowd of 4,000 marched in the third annual Women’s March Minnesota from Western Sculpture Park to the Capitol, where they gathered to hear from students, activists and lawmakers.

Photographer Jeffrey Harrington bought the Mpls Photo Center from founders Orin and Abby Rutchick in November 2015. At the time, the center had operated for seven years in an upper floor of the Northwind Lofts at 24th Avenue and 2nd Street North as a gathering place for photographers, students, darkroom devotees and professionals working with digital and film photography. Harrington continued the photography programs begun by the couple he describes as “visionaries,” and increased membership and the frequency of exhibitions.

The building at 220 Lowry Avenue NE was a neighborhood gathering place long before Market Bar-B-Que hung its beckoning neon pig over the front entrance.

On Jan. 7, the Public Health, Environment, Civil Rights, and Engagement Committee met at Minneapolis City Hall to hear and vote on the recommendations of the Northern Metals Advisory Committee on how to allocate $600,000 in settlement funds for air pollution caused by Northern Metals operations at its plants along the river in North Minneapolis.

The Soap Factory, 514 2nd Street SE, has always gotten by without a lot of money, but with a deficit amounting in the millions and a deadline looming midyear, the board of directors behind the iconic East Side art locale has put out a plea for help. Assorted problems with the building have caught up with them, and after struggling to find funding to pay for renovations and failing to make a mortgage deal to pay the contractor’s bill, Soap Factory leaders decided to turn to the public for a hard push to meet their goal: $1.2 million within the next five months.

You might call it the “perfect storm” of bridge repair. Come next year, three historic bridges – the 10th Avenue Bridge, the 3rd Avenue Bridge and the Stone Arch Bridge – are slated for repair jobs that will keep the first two, at least, shut down for a year or more.

The Mississippi Watershed Management Organization (MWMO) will begin to address flooding issues and water quality in Northeast Minneapolis, thanks to $800,000 from the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources (BWSR). The funds come from the state’s Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment, and will be used to install a series of stormwater best management practices (BMPs) at the Columbia Golf Course in Northeast Minneapolis.