When people think of cultural hubs, they often look to the bright lights of New York, the creative sprawl of Los Angeles, or the indie corners of Chicago. But tucked here in the heartland, Kansas City pulses with a creative energy that is both fierce and quietly radical. Being an artist and researcher here means working at the intersection of tradition and innovation—and doing so against the grain of what people expect from the Midwest.

The Midwest is a Liminal Space

Kansas City is a place that exists between. Between rural and urban, between historical roots and contemporary experimentation. It is a region marked by jazz and barbecue, by towering murals and empty lots, by revitalized art districts and grassroots galleries operating on shoestring budgets. For an artist like me—working in narrative design, poetry, interactive fiction, and game-based learning—this liminality is fertile ground.

In many ways, being an artist in the Midwest is being in constant dialogue with silence. Without the noise of major media markets, artists here are left to create not for trends but for survival, for community, for voice. And there’s something rebellious in that. There’s freedom in making work that isn’t immediately commodified or algorithmically optimized.

Scholarship in the Shadow of Silos

As a researcher, Kansas City also provides me with something rare: proximity to forgotten narratives. The city is steeped in history, from the stories of westward expansion and Indigenous displacement to jazz-age revolutions and labor struggles. In the Midwest, research feels tactile. Archival dust, oral histories, and living folklore still breathe here.

I’ve learned that being an academic or artist in Kansas City is not about adhering to the ivory tower or gallery scene, but about moving through communities, libraries, dive bars, zine fairs, and back-alley murals. This city blurs the line between research and lived experience. Here, theory walks hand-in-hand with the everyday.

A Creative Practice Outside the Coastal Gaze

For some, working outside of LA, NYC, or even Austin may feel isolating. But in Kansas City, the creative community is intimate, grassroots, and highly collaborative. There’s a punk ethos baked into the art scene here, where DIY galleries, mutual aid projects, and independent publishing thrive alongside institutions like the Nelson-Atkins or Charlotte Street Foundation.

You make your own lane. You find collaborators at a poetry reading in the Crossroads or bump into a programmer at a local dive who becomes your co-designer.

We are artists who wear many hats—painter and educator, poet and coder, folklorist and game designer. The Midwest demands versatility, and that multiplicity informs the layered work we produce.

The Artist-Scholar in 2025

We live in a volatile era where the American Midwest is increasingly seen as a battleground—not just politically but culturally. Anti-intellectualism and budget cuts plague education, while public art programs fight for oxygen. And yet, this friction is also where urgent art and radical pedagogy are born.

To be an artist and researcher in Kansas City today means to stand at a crossroads between legacy and rupture. It means creating work that both honors the histories of this land and challenges the reductive narratives projected onto it.

My Call to Fellow Artists

To those working in or near Kansas City—or the wider Midwest—I say: embrace this strange space. The margins are where experiments happen, where wild ideas ferment.

Make art that refuses to be categorized. Make scholarship that looks beyond data into human messiness. Make work that serves your community, not just institutions.

If you are in KC, passing through, or hungry for connection, reach out. Let’s grab coffee, trade zines, share in the chaos of being creators in the flyover states. And if you’re old-school like me—send a letter! I’m always seeking snail mail buddies and fellow thinkers to build something real with.

Kansas City isn’t just home—it’s a laboratory for stories that don’t fit neatly on the coasts.

Long live the Midwest artist.