Signature Events
Ethne Clarke
Looking for a bold way to redefine the spaces outside your home? Award-winning gardening journalist Ethne Clarke offers a fresh guide – with some historical context – in a discussion of her book The Midcentury Modern Landscape.
Owen/Cox Dance Group
Friday Night Family Fun
Students in the Owen/Cox Dance Group’s Take the Stage Program perform to live music alongside their teachers and mentors. Kids in the audience can dance, too. For all ages.
Join the Library at its recently renovated Southeast Branch for a day of community celebration. Visit our space and check out refreshed collections, new meeting rooms, upgraded technology, and enhanced services. Guests are also invited to view the new Goppert Media Center – the permanent home for the teen-focused Kansas City Digital Media Lab (KCDML).
Joyce Smith, Aaron Randle, Steve Vockrodt
The Library kicks off a new series with The Kansas City Star to discuss the news and issues that matter to Kansas Citians. In the first of the series, Star reporters Joyce Smith, Aaron Randle and Steve Vockrodt join members of the public for a conversation about issues affecting the Westport area, such as safety, nightlife and development. Coffee and pastries provided. RSVP is required as space is limited.
Bill Worley
Missouri Valley Sundays
Historian Bill Worley discusses the arrival and settlement of French traders in what’s now Kansas City’s West Bottoms area – but then was Indian country – in the latter half of the 19th century. It brought permanent change to the traditional way of life for local Native American tribes.
As Kansas City’s 2018 Art in the Loop Project: KC Plays! prepares to open, a number of the participating artists, dancers, musicians, and poets take turns discussing their works. They are introduced by art directors Jahaira Aguilar and Andrew Lattner.
Making a Great City
Recent economic successes in Los Angeles, Denver, and Minneapolis, among other cities, have been fueled by the resurgence of small-scale urban neighborhoods. That same potential, urban designer Jim Kumon says, exists in the lots and blocks of Kansas City and every other medium and large municipality in the Midwest.
Friday Night Family Fun
Adapted from Alexander Pushkin’s classic tale, this Johnson County Community College Theatre production tells the story of an old fisherman who catches a glistening, talking goldfish with wish-granting powers. He kindly releases the fish to the appall of his wife, who insists on re-catching the magical creature – again and again – until her greed gets the better of her.
