In honor of Women’s History Month, Urban Exposure Independent Film Project and Azubuike Arts is screening eight short films written and directed by the summer program’s young women. The festival will be streamed for free on Facebook on Monday, March 15 and 22 at 6 p.m. Each screening will be followed by a conversation between the first-time filmmakers, host Gaye Shannon Burnett (president of Azubuike African American Council for the Arts), and a special guest independent filmmaker. An online interactive Q&A will follow the short films with the Facebook Live audience. “This is first time... Read More

Saturday in the Arts is a weekly feature covering a trend, subject, event or personality of local interest. It runs every Saturday morning on your site for the best entertainment and arts coverage in the area, QuadCities.com! Two days after Broadway theaters shut down last March, Circa ’21 Dinner Playhouse held the last performance of the colorful, high-energy “Kinky Boots,” on March 14, 2020. It would be the last mainstage musical there until next week’s “Church Basement Ladies in You Smell Barn” – opening in previews Wednesday, March 17. It’s been a long, frustrating road, with... Read More

A year into the pandemic, United Way Quad Cities has awarded $109,528 to 11 local nonprofits helping to meet residents’ emerging and evolving needs related to their education, income and health. The third distribution of United Way’s Covid-19 Rebuilding Fund grants provides resources for families to receive mental health support, women to find stable employment after a Covid-related layoff, and students and at-risk youth to receive remote learning support or mentoring. “In one way or another, this pandemic has impacted everyone — and even a year in, many Quad Citizens are struggling to... Read More

Living Proof Exhibit, which provides the therapeutic benefits of the arts to people impacted by cancer, is seeking entries for its annual exhibition to be held from Aug. 16 to Sept. 30, 2021 in the Charles and Elizabeth Bisignano Art Gallery at the University of Dubuque. All cancer patients and survivors living within a 200-mile radius of the Quad-Cities are eligible to submit up to five works for consideration. Entries must be received by June 1, 2021. Complete submission details, including the call for entry and application form, are available at www.livingproofexhibit.org. “We are thrilled... Read More

The 2021 season of the Performing Arts Series at Davenport’s First Presbyterian Church begins with a Saturday night concert featuring cellist Hannah Holman, accompanied by church music director Matt Bishop on the harpsichord and piano. Due to Covid restrictions, this pre-recorded concert from the church will be virtual only, premiering at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 13, and the video will be available for two weeks. The concert is based around a theme of travel – taking listeners on a geographical and musical tour of France, Italy, Germany, Hungary and Russia. Each of the works — by Antonio... Read More

Fortunately, there are technically just 10 days left in winter – but our yearlong battle with loneliness and isolation may continue in spring. Baritone Nathan Windt and pianist Marian Lee on Friday will present selections from the preeminent song cycle on this season of discontent and its profound connection to life today. The St. Ambrose University assistant professors will perform from Franz Schubert’s 1827 “Winterreise” — considered by many to be the pinnacle of the German song-cycle repertoire. Written nearly 200 years ago, it may seem that the story of a wanderer making sense... Read More

The Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds, 2815 W. Locust St., Davenport, plans to host two major music events at its big Fair Center in March. A St. Patrick’s Day Bash is scheduled for March 12-13, and the planned lineup is: Friday — Roadside Circus, 8 p.m. to 10 p.m., Project X 10:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. Saturday — Doug Brundies, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., North Of 40, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. (plus Flying Leprechauns at 3), Electric Shock, 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., Casey Muessigmann, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., Tomb, 8:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., and Cheese Pizza, 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. “Mask up Quad Cities and let’s... Read More

Innovation and collaboration in the face of an unprecedented challenge helped the St. Ambrose University Theatre Department and KALA-FM, the public radio station on campus, combine to win a first-place national award at the annual Intercollegiate Broadcasting System conference on Saturday, March 6. The award for the Best Radio Drama honored the Theatre Department’s fall 2020 performance of Henrik Ibsen’s classic play, “An Enemy of the People.” The 2019 adaptation of the 1882 play was penned by Tom Isbell, a theater professor at University of Minnesota-Duluth (UMD), who is friends with... Read More

Benjamin Leischner, executive director of the Quad City International Airport, is chairman of the new Illinois Airports Council. He and other airport leaders are praising a proposed amendment to Illinois Aeronautics Act, legislation that defines the role of the Illinois Department of Transportation when it comes to regulating aviation in the state of Illinois. SB-1764 works to streamline how commercial service airports in the state of Illinois receive federal money awarded by the FAA to airports, better defines allowable use of state money for the construction of public aeronautical facilities... Read More

Quad City Arts is providing over $84,000 in funding for 25 area organizations, arts-centered programs, and individual artists in 2021. The goal of the Arts Dollars Project and Education Grants is to provide funding for a variety of organizations and projects that have strong community impact and feature unique and interesting artistic ideas and to ensure that artists are being paid in the process. “Arts Dollars is unique – it’s a re-granting program designed to funnel funds deeper into the community, for smaller, more targeted grants,” Kaleigh Trammell of Quad City... Read More