Sketches of Minnesota on the Side by Side Podcast
We’re thrilled to share that our civic storytelling project, Sketches of Minnesota, was recently featured on the University of Minnesota’s Side by Side Podcast. In this episode, Tane Danger (Danger Boat Productions) and Tryg Throntveit (Minnesota Humanities Center) dive into the heart of the project—how improv comedy, history, and community dialogue can help Minnesotans see themselves and one another in new ways.
A Sketches of Minnesota Conversation in West St. Paul.
What is Sketches of Minnesota?
At its core, Sketches of Minnesota is an experiment in civic imagination. Through a combination of community conversations and live improv performances, we turn local stories into comedy and theater that is at once funny, surprising, and deeply human. Each event invites audiences to laugh, reflect, and consider what it means to live in community with one another.
The project is co-produced by Danger Boat Productions and the Minnesota Humanities Center, with the goal of bringing people together across Minnesota to share stories and explore big questions through humor.
Highlights from the Podcast
In their conversation on Side by Side, Tane and Tryg shared some of the guiding ideas behind the project:
Comedy as connection: Improv makes difficult or complex issues approachable. By laughing together, communities create space for deeper listening and understanding.
Partnership matters: Working with the Minnesota Humanities Center ensures the project reaches communities of every size and background, from rural towns to city neighborhoods.
Bridging divides: The goal isn’t to give people answers, but to create an environment where they can hear one another differently. As Tane noted, “It’s not about us telling communities who they are. It’s about helping them see themselves more clearly.”
Democracy as an art form: The show explores how storytelling and imagination are essential tools for civic life—reminding us that democracy is something we create together.
Why This Matters
Minnesota is full of diverse voices and perspectives. Yet too often, those voices don’t get to speak—or be heard—in the same room. Sketches of Minnesota creates a shared stage where policy, culture, and everyday life collide in unexpected ways. The result: communities that laugh, learn, and reflect together.
Listen and Learn More
The full episode of the podcast is available now:
👉 Click here to listen.
Want to see Sketches of Minnesota live? Explore our full tour schedule here.
The cast of the Sketches of Minnesota Scripted show.
Transcript
Singer:
Oh, we ain't got a barrel of money. Maybe we're ragged and funny, but we'll travel along singing a song side by side.
Tane Danger:
I do think that we live in a way where the narratives that we often hear about places are told by other people about those places, and a lot of times that can be framed negatively, right? Here's the issue or the challenges and we talk about those, but frankly, people want to tell you why they love where they are and why it is great. And it is not a mistake that I am here or I'm not left behind. I'm really glad I am here in this town of 400 people or this small city like on the river or in this place, out on the prairie, and I can't imagine being anywhere else. And let me list off the seven things about it that just makes it amazing and great.
Tryg Throntveit:
Some of the tough things, especially that come up are actually much more consistent across almost every region of the state than you might think. By focusing on the positive and inviting people to be thankful and proud, our participants feel less trepidatious about then addressing the things that aren't so great because they've reminded themselves that it's worth fighting for this place and addressing those issues because they've just spoken for 25 minutes with their neighbors who they never knew before about all of the wonderful things that they have to fight for. You can take responsibility for your public life. You have the tools to care about and learn about the most important facts of your public life, which are the other people that you share it with.
Ellen Wolter:
That's Tane Danger and Tryg. Throntveit, who collaborated last year to create sketches of Minnesota, which as Tane describes is like Saturday Night Live, but every scene is about a different place in Minnesota. Tane Leads Danger Boat Productions and Tryg led this work in his former role at the Minnesota Humanity Center. Sketches of Minnesota involved visiting communities across Minnesota together local stories, and then transformed these stories into live improv comedy shows. Tane and Tryg joined me to talk about sketches of Minnesota and their experience visiting over 10 communities from Duluth to Austin to International Falls to the small town of Emily. They describe what they learned about what it means for people to gather, to celebrate the place where they live, foster connections and address local issues. As Tryg noted in every community, it doesn't matter how small there is, cultural, intellectual, and historical depth.
Ellen Wolter:
Tane and Tryg also shared how they found that urban, suburban and rural communities are navigating many of the same issues, and how division is often mapped onto rural and urban communities with urban and rural pitted against each other. But the reality is there is division within rural and urban communities and sketches of Minnesota provides a way for communities to come together and navigate finding common ground. This was such a fun conversation and spoiler alert, it is a long one because Tane and Tryg really do live the work they do, which is to bring humor and joy in connecting people and fostering civic engagement
Singer:
When they've all had their quarrels and parted. We'll be the same as we started just to travel along singing a song side by side.
Ellen Wolter:
This is Ellen Wolter with the University of Minnesota Extension, and welcome to the Side-by-Side podcast. I'm just going to start with the hard hitting questions. So Tane, let's start with you. Tell us a little bit about Danger Boat Productions.
Tane Danger:
So Danger Boat Productions is an organization I, Tane Danger, founded alongside Brandon Boat. And we both have a long history using improv as a tool for bringing people together around big ideas and issues. And frankly, just with each other, probably the show that we're best known for is something called the Theater of Public Policy, which is a show we did for many, many years where we would interview somebody really smart about a big issue on stage and then bring to life whatever they said with a team of really talented improvisers. So my favorite description of the Theater of Public Policy was C-Span being swarmed by the cast of Saturday Night Live. And so we did that for many years and then we expanded into doing a lot of types of trainings and educational programs again using improv, which is this wonderful tool for helping people connect and open up and listen to each other.
Ellen Wolter:
And Tryg, tell us about the Minnesota Humanities Center.
Tryg Throntveit:
We're affiliated with the National Endowment for the Humanities, but we are an independent nonprofit and our mission is to help advance just society whose members are more curious, connected, and compassionate. And we do that by supporting high quality humanities experiences across the state all across the state. And by humanities you might think of literature and history and ethics and philosophy and religious studies and anthropology. We really think of it as all of the ways that people make meaning out of the bare facts of our existence. So how do we tell stories about our world and about one another and our places in the world and in each other's lives in ways that help us make sense of it and from our perspective can help us improve it? We're a grant making agency is a big part of our work. We distribute millions of dollars of grants to cultural and other organizations all across greater Minnesota as well as the metro area money that comes as a result of the Legacy Amendment, which was adopted in 2008.
Tryg Throntveit:
And then we also do our own programming. So we do a lot of programming that's focused on helping communities develop the capacity to tell their own stories, also to listen better to stories that are unfamiliar, whether within their own communities or from beyond their communities and communities. And to develop the kind of understanding that even across differences allows people to remain in healthy relationships with one another, keep their eyes focused on the things that they jointly treasure and share in common their communities, their resources one another. And we try to do that by lifting up not only important stories from the past or the present that maybe scholars or other people know about, but by really centering the stories of communities and individuals right there in the room, the people who come to participate in our program.
Ellen Wolter:
So you both came together with your expertise of improv and telling stories and working across difference to create sketches of Minnesota. So tell us a little bit about what that is and how this idea came about.
Tane Danger:
Sure. Sketches of Minnesota is this, I will be on it. It is an idea that I had in my head for many, many years where I wanted to use this tool of telling stories and listening to people and bringing to life what they said through improv comedy. And I thought specifically for a long time, oh, this would be a very cool thing to do in communities all over the state, frankly, just about anywhere, what if we took a team of improvisers to different communities? We got them to tell us about what they care about, what is important to them about their town, about where they live, about their community. And then we reflected that back to them through unscripted humor. And we used all the magic and solvent powers of humor to bring to life some big issues and some maybe disagreements people have, but also what people really care about and what is valuable.
Tane Danger:
And so this was one of many ideas that I kind of had bouncing around in my head for a long time of like, well, that would be really cool. You could probably do a lot of good in being able to lift some of these things up and you would hear really interesting things and it would make compelling content on stage and you just would have this opportunity to probably bring some people together that might not otherwise ever be in the same space together. But a lot of ideas. I walked around for a long time with this idea and would say it to people and they'd be like, well, yeah, I don't know. That's interesting. In the very Minnesota way they would say That's interesting. Until I talked to Tryg and I was like, Hey, we were working on something else together. And I was talking to Tryg and I was like, oh yeah, I've had this idea for a long time. What if you went to communities all over the state and you listened to them and you brought to life what they were saying? And Tryg was like, oh, that's a really good idea, which was, it was very nice when somebody says that to you about something that you come up with. And then
Tryg Throntveit:
I intentionally did not use the word
Tane Danger:
Interesting
Tryg Throntveit:
Because I know what it means in that. Exactly.
Tane Danger:
That was the first green light. It wasn't just interesting. It was good. And then Tryg and I got to talking and then we spent a year kind of talking and thinking and hashing out what would this look like? How would we do it? How would we facilitate those conversations?
Tryg Throntveit:
For me, it was really important that this idea not be something, not turn into something. And this was never Tam's original intention. It was really important that we were able to execute this idea in a way that did not turn it into something we were doing to or for communities, but that it was something we brought to communities as a way to say, Hey, we're in a time of division. We're in a time of polarization. We're in a time of disaffection as well as hyperpolarization. We are not here to tell you how to resolve your disputes. We're not here to tell you even what things you should or shouldn't be arguing about. We're here to give you the confidence to remind you that you can take responsibility for your public life, that you have the tools to care about and learn about the most important facts of your public life, which are the other people that you share it with.
Tryg Throntveit:
So if we can find a way to get you here to trust us, this is what we try to do with all of our program center so that we can give you an example of how you have the tools and you can work on them and you can improve them, but you have the tools to repair your own public life and your relationships. Let's do that. And it struck me and it struck our CEO, Kevin Lindsay, that using humor as not just a way to take the edge off, but as a reward. Here's the carrot, here's the prize. You're going to have this experimental experience, but at the end you're going to laugh. So at the very least you get a good laugh out of it.
Tane Danger:
And in this humor space that I think is really valuable and important to say that carrot aspect of humor, that there's a show at the end of this thing that is going to be funny. Hopefully if we do it right 90% of the time, we do it very, very well. And people are laughing a lot.
Ellen Wolter:
I saw the show as very funny.
Tane Danger:
Thank you. That's good. It's good that you said that as opposed to Tryg or I because less biased than we are, but I think that that is so important when we think about wanting to bring people together. And it's been something that we have been really focused on with Danger Boat the whole time that we've done all kinds of community engagement work where frankly I'll just say we build a lot of community gathering programs or educational programs with this sort of like, well, people should come to this because it's good for them, you'll learn something, it's educational, it's your civic duty, but frankly people are busy. But if you can and it's actually going to be really fun, you're going to have a good time with it, you're going to be entertained and you're going to laugh and you're going to be laughing with members of your community.
Tane Danger:
That is really powerful. And we see that that's a big thing that draws people in. If we were just to say, well, we're just going to have you talk to strangers about the things that are challenging about your town, there are people who would show up for that. We get a lot more people than just those folks though who come to sketches of Minnesota events. And I do think that it's important and valuable that it's fun, and we draw a different kind of audience because it's an improv comedy show at the end of the day about your stuff that you care about and you're going to love that.
Tryg Throntveit:
And it really is. It's the nation's first ever best only civic muscle building, improv comedy experience. But it only works and only can do that serious work because we meet people where they are. We don't come in and tell them, this is what you have to fix about your community. We come in and say, let's all learn about your community, including you learning about your community from the other people in it. And that's why it works. And of course it works because Tane and his cast are really, really funny and they don't have to just listen to someone with a name that they can't pronounce, giving them pointers on civic life.
Ellen Wolter:
And super talented too. That show is hilarious. Super talented folks on that stage. I think one of the other things that struck me about this work is you're asking people to share about their community. And not just challenges, but the things that they love about their community or the things that they think are funny about their community. The only one that can make fun of your community is you living there and people love their communities and it's an opportunity for them to tell their story about their community and especially in rural areas and in some neighborhoods, I think in Minneapolis, St. Paul, your community story is often told by other people, by dominant narratives and dominant news. So that's what I loved about the work that you're doing is you're allowing people through humor and storytelling to tell a great story about their community,
Tryg Throntveit:
Really centering the stories of participants, community members, everyday citizens. It's a way to tell your own story and enhance your own story by caring a lot about the stories of other people and learning from them. And that's kind of the sweet spot that the meal and the comedy and the invitation for people to focus on their answers to open-ended questions. What do you love about your town? What's something people who aren't from around here might get wrong about it? What is something that you see dividing people in your town that concern you? What do you imagine for the future of your town? This makes the people themselves, the generators of all the cool content that they gain from the experience. And that's why it's this effort to build the capacities, not by giving those capacities to people, but by just reminding people they have this power to do this work together. And it's fun and rewarding.
Tane Danger:
We spend a lot of time working with that community to try and make sure that we have a cross section of people across socioeconomic political backgrounds, race and ethnicity, people from all different parts of town, which sometimes is actually a big piece of it. And we try and get them all in there together. And then we open with asking people, hopefully sitting with some people that they don't know. And the very first question that we ask people is, what do you love about your community? What is great about this place? And one of the learnings for me in the first year of doing this is that if you ask people What is great about your community, what do you love about it? People will talk your ear off anywhere you go, every single community we went in the state, people will talk to you for however long you let them about why their town, their neighborhood, their county is the best place and they are so glad that they are there.
Tane Danger:
And I think that that's just a really important, valuable thing. And it may sound obvious, but yet I do think that we kind of going to what you said live in a way where the narratives that we often hear about places are told by other people about those places. And a lot of times, frankly, because of the way a lot of media and communications that can be framed negatively, right? Oh, here's the thing that's like, here's the issue or the challenges and we talk about those, but it is not a mistake that I am here or I'm not left behind here by some sort of pitfall, but rather I've lived all different kinds of places and I'm really glad I am here in this town of 400 people or this small city on the river or in this place out on the prairie, and I can't imagine being anywhere else. And let me list off the seven things about it that just makes it amazing and great and which other people are, it's wild if they couldn't imagine why this is amazing.
Tryg Throntveit:
By focusing on the positive and inviting people to be thankful and proud, you are able to, if you carefully build it in, take that next step, which the stereotypical Minnesotan and increasingly American in a divided society is more hesitant to take. Our participants feel less guilty or less ashamed or just less trepidatious about then addressing the things that aren't so great, aren't going well, that are concerning because they've reminded themselves that it's fighting for this place and addressing those issues because they've just spoken for 25 minutes with their neighbors who they never knew before about all of the wonderful things that they have to fight for really in this community. And so by really giving people that opportunity to just kind of revel in their place, that allows us then to help them go on to what can you do to identify what would make it even better?
Tryg Throntveit:
What we found in every town there is pride, there's hope and determination and real love, but there's also real sadness in a lot of these towns because of the way that relationships are being strained by seemingly in the view of many people, factors that seem to have spiraled beyond their control, national debates or narratives or national structural economic or cultural or social factors. And before asking them to think about what issues show up in really concrete, specific ways in their community and what they might do about them, they need to be filled up and buoyed first
Tryg Throntveit:
And reminded of all the resources that they have to draw on, including the people across the table from them who in that next conversation might turn out to have very different ideas about how to address some of these problems. But because they've spent some time learning about the dedication and the care and the love for the place that they share, a pathway is open to listen and explore some of those differences rather than to say, oh, this is just another part of the problem that I was trying to avoid or that I don't dunno what to do about.
Tane Danger:
Yeah. And the second question, which is my favorite, I think of the four that we typically ask most directly is what's something that people not from your community get wrong about it? And that is this wonderful invitation for folks to basically say like, well, there's a lot of stories about this place or about what's going on here and they don't get it quite right. And I love asking that question, this invitation for people to share all of that. The third question is about what divisions or challenges do you perceive amongst your neighbors and in your community? And then we ask people at the end and the fourth question, what do you imagine the future of this place to be? And the whole time as we're doing this, we have this team of really amazing improvisers who are listening to that, taking notes. And again, as we outlined at the top, their job is not, and it's something that we spend a lot of time working on. Their job is not to come into a community and have an idea of what is this show going to be, but to honestly show up and be open to what people tell us about their community and absorb that and then reflect it back as best they can on stage with nothing preconceived. So that it is just as you were saying, not us taking that narrative from them, but really trying to just use our tools to reflect back what they said.
Tryg Throntveit:
I do want to add one more thing. We have a talk back at the end just as we're going through the structure.
Tane Danger:
So we do the show and the show is usually about 20, 30 minutes of improv, all sketches made up on the spot, just informed by what the town has said. And as Tryg noted, it's funny and hilarious and yet poignant and gets to some real tough stuff sometimes. And we do all of that. And then once that wraps and the cast takes its final bow, we go to a talkback that Tryg leads and Tryg. Do you want to say how you do that? Yeah,
Tryg Throntveit:
Well we do that. Well, I stand up and I ask them several questions, but the first thing I say is, this is your town and these are your stories. You get the last word on these stories. So what did you think? What did the group get? What really hit home in a great way? The cast is so good, they never punched down. We have never had a group that was offended or anything. But one thing we often get is, and I ask the question, what table did that come from? Question and take the response can take two forms. It can be like, I need to know where that story came from because that is exactly my experience in this town spot on. Or it can be, I need to know where that story came from because I had no idea anyone in this town felt that way or had experienced that. Holy moly. So it's a chance to give people the last word on their own story, but also to continue the learnings about those neighbors that they didn't get a chance to share the meal with and have a discussion with. And to continue to reflect on what they've learned and what they might want to think about and explore further in whatever other organizations or groups, churches, book clubs or coffee clutches that they participate in their daily lives.
Ellen Wolter:
And one step I wanted to ask about that we missed, how are communities selected and can you give some examples of which communities in which towns you went to across the state? Sort of like an
Tryg Throntveit:
Auction, like highest bidder.
Tane Danger:
That's a joke, everyone just in case as a state funded agency, anybody's listening to it
Tryg Throntveit:
Go on. In fact, it is the opposite. We have an open application process and we invite people to fill in an application and we just ask people to share their plan. Why would this really good for your town? Where would you host it? What is your plan for bringing diverse elements of your community together that might not often interact in this kind of a way or in any way? And we have to make some really tough decisions about who seems to have the capacity, either the physical capacity, a space that can accommodate it, or whose calendar actually works with our calendar. We look for geographic diversity. We really don't want to do a whole show where it's all in one corner of the state. We've been lucky these past two years to get a really wide range of applications from all around the state.
Ellen Wolter:
Can you share a few of the towns from the first year?
Tane Danger:
Yes. And I appreciate these because people often are like, where are all of the places you went? Which I should be able to just do all 10 off the top of my head, but so last year we were in Winona, Morris, west, St. Paul, Austin. We did go up to Duluth now. Yeah, help me out.
Tryg Throntveit:
Glencoe,
Tane Danger:
Glencoe,
Tryg Throntveit:
Emily.
Tane Danger:
Oh, Emily. Emily was actually, so Emily, Minnesota, it's a little bit northwestern Minnesota. It's a small town, about 700 people and 125 people came to that show, which I was like, wow, I wasn't a math major. That's one in eight people in the town. We're all there and well, this all isn't going to air until August. So we can probably say some of the places that we're going this year, right? I don't know trigger. Are we allowed to say where we're going?
Tryg Throntveit:
Yeah. Do you want to know where we're going this year? It's pretty fresh. I dunno if it's hot off out of the oven, but it's still cooling. So Bram, new Ohm, the Kingfield neighborhood in Minneapolis,
Tane Danger:
Which is our first time doing, we did one show last year in West St. Paul, but this'll be our first time doing one in sort of Minneapolis St. Paul proper. And to do that, we're doing it in a neighborhood and we're defining sort of the neighborhood as the community, which is an experiment. It's the first time we're doing it that way.
Ellen Wolter:
I love that. And I say this all the time on the podcast, so my listers are going to be like, great Ellen, I get to hear this one more time. But I now live in central Minnesota, but I used to live in Minneapolis and my little neighborhood was my little small town. I grew up in a small town and it began to feel like that. So I love that you're doing a neighborhood. I do think they're like these little small towns.
Tryg Throntveit:
We're also doing Rochester, Deerwood, Rosemount, big Fork.
Tane Danger:
I'll pause on because I believe Big Fork is even smaller than Emily. I think that it's sub 400 potentially
Tryg Throntveit:
Fergus Falls, which is where my mom was born. So I'm excited about that. I want to see if they've finally put that plaque up and New York Mills, which was also the home of the Great American think off. I dunno if you knew that.
Ellen Wolter:
Yeah, I've done work in, shout out to Betsy Rotor. I've done work with New York Meals. They're go
Tryg Throntveit:
Fantastic. I just moderated the Great American Think off last month.
Ellen Wolter:
Oh, did you?
Tryg Throntveit:
And I do have to say, did we forget on our first tour International Falls, we went all the way up to International Falls. I
Tane Danger:
Apologize,
Tryg Throntveit:
Which was a great, great event. So we have really covered a lot of geography.
Ellen Wolter:
So you had these conversations around the state and then you pulled all of that information or I'm a researcher by trade, so I have to say data. I'm sorry. So you pull all of that together and you create a final show. So tell me a little bit about that process and what that
Tane Danger:
Looks like. So last year we went to,
Tryg Throntveit:
Do we have to tell you in researcher terms?
Ellen Wolter:
Yes. I want to know the methodology, I want to know the sample size. I want to know conclusions.
Tryg Throntveit:
Good because I prepared a literature review. Oh wait, no one's ever done this before.
Tane Danger:
Well, so the P value of our,
Ellen Wolter:
Oh, you guys are speaking my language.
Tane Danger:
So what we
Ellen Wolter:
Do is we take
Tane Danger:
All of these stories from all these different towns all across Minnesota and we put them into Stata. And people don't know this, but you can hit a button and then instead of spitting out a report, it spits out jokes. So
Tryg Throntveit:
Improv Comedy, no.
Tane Danger:
Okay, going to get to, now I'm going to say what did we actually do? So we go to all 10 communities. We have this amazing facilitated conversation. People are talking about all kinds of stories and things like that. We do a show, a live show, and that show that we do in each community is entirely improvised. It is made up on the spot just based on what we heard in that town that night that is very raw and alive and beautiful and everybody is kind of there along for the ride with that. And then as Tryg noted, we have a talk back afterwards so that people can say, that was great, that was spot on. So we do this all over the state and that's amazing. Beautiful. We have a member of the Danger boat team who is assigned as the head sketch writer and they are listening to all of this and they're watching the show and then they are working with the rest of the improv cast to be like, okay, in this town you all did this scene about Emily Minnesota is an example about the divisions between the people who live there 12 months of the year and the people who just come for cabin season.
Tane Danger:
That was a really good scene, but we need to flesh out, so we need to build that scene out. And then that head writer works again with the members of the team to take what that nut of an idea that showed up in the show and really shape it and form it. And then we're doing that with all 10 of the communities and you're trying to piece together things like this here, and we've got this piece here. We heard in multiple communities, for example, about the issue of belonging and people feeling like whether or not they belong or they fit in a community and sometimes how hard that can be. Okay, that's going to be a theme that's actually maybe going to show up in a few different places at the show. And you're piecing that all together to structure a final scripted show that is going to have at least one sketch reflection of every single place we went.
Tane Danger:
And at the same time try and weave together some of the themes, some of the broad stories that we heard all across the state and what people in a whole bunch of places are talking about that are similar. The vast majority of what we heard are everybody is concerned about do I fit in here? How hard or not hard is it to make connections and make friends and feel welcome? How welcoming are we to other people who come here? What is the economic future of this place? Is this place that I love going to be here in 20, 30, 50 years?
Tryg Throntveit:
How many more traffic rotaries are they going to install?
Tane Danger:
We did
Tryg Throntveit:
Learn this was a burning issue.
Tane Danger:
We did learn. Nobody likes traffic circles. Basically everybody admits that they are probably good engineers like that. It was kind of a fun thing to discover that everywhere across the state, traffic circles are uniting and they are annoying for people anyway, but we do all
Ellen Wolter:
That. Well, I'm going to cause some division. I kind of like traffic circles.
Tane Danger:
I like
Ellen Wolter:
Them too. I know
Tane Danger:
This is what's going to get us canceled is that everybody on this podcast right now likes traffic circles. I always say kind of imagine it is like Saturday Night Live or your favorite sketch show, but every scene is about a different place in Minnesota that we went to when we heard. And there's some jokes and there's some comedy that's in there that is very specific to those places, but you don't have to have been at any of those places to get the show overall. You get a tour of Minnesota and what people are talking about all over the state in about 60 minutes or less.
Ellen Wolter:
And it sounds like you heard a lot of similarities. Trick. I also heard you say housing.
Tryg Throntveit:
Yeah. Some of the tough things especially that come up are actually much more consistent across region of the community feels as if it's changing demographically, whether that's new migrant or immigrant populations, whether it's people moving from urban areas into smaller rural areas, whether it's age related change and the tensions between older and younger residents and the different priorities that people have. And housing is something that boy, everybody in the state is worried about uncertainty about the rapid change in the economy and the difficulty that people have planning even just a couple of years out in a dynamic and really uncertain economy race, not every town, but in many towns, both the problems of racial conflict but also worries that towns have developed a reputation as being unwelcome that may not be deserved. And that even certain people who might be expected to feel unwelcome don't want other people telling that story about their town when it might not actually map that well onto their experience or certainly doesn't exhaust their whole experience of the town. And of course just political polarization was in every single, right.
Tane Danger:
And I mean one of the ones that I mentioned, the belonging one in the final show, that final scripted show a scene from a town where it was like somebody noting that they had lived on the same block for five years and they felt like nobody on their block, people on their block would wave at them but never invited them over for dinner. That was something we heard almost everywhere we went and probably could do a version of that scene everywhere we went from the smallest town where the block might be. A lot of the town, a lot of people are not very far away from each other to big communities like Duluth or Winona or whatnot. People in a lot of places really feel like, I love this place, but why does nobody reach out and want to make a connection with me? We did also hear that when that gets layered with race and ethnicity dynamics, sometimes it can be even more pronounced for folks.
Tane Danger:
One of the goals of sketches of Minnesota is to communicate to communities. We can help you lift some of these issues up, but the solutions to a lot of this are actually right here in this community. So when people would lift up, I feel like I've lived here and people just don't reach out or don't want to connect, and then it would come up again in the talk bag and then people would raise their hand and be like, I see you and don't want that for you and let's connect. We literally had people exchanging phone numbers at the event to be like, well, we're going to get together again next week.
Ellen Wolter:
Are there any other surprising things like that that happened that you didn't expect that was sort of an unintended positive consequence that you were like, oh, I wasn't thinking that's what we were going to do, but here we are.
Tane Danger:
I can think of a couple Tryg. Do you have one
Tryg Throntveit:
In Little Falls? Did we mention Little Falls? We
Tane Danger:
Didn't mention Little Falls. I'm
Tryg Throntveit:
So sorry. Little Falls. Oh my gosh. Little Falls was a phenomenal host community and in Little Falls we had a woman in the talk back who stood up and was in tears. I mean, happy tears, but tears saying, I just basically turned to the whole audience of participants and said, I just want to thank everybody for being here and doing this with me and with us. I mean, I'm paraphrasing, but I thought I was the only person who cared about some of these issues. I have been feeling so helpless and upset because I thought I didn't know anyone else for whom these things were important. And this was a community where some issues about race and issues about socioeconomic inequality and justice came up and she said, I'm just so glad that all of you came out here because even though not everyone here agrees, I now just don't feel so alone.
Tryg Throntveit:
I know other people are thinking and taking these things seriously. And it was a really moving experience. In another location was this Emily where there were two women who had fallen out over politics several years before and one of them reached out to the other and said, I really think we should do this together. And they came and had this experience together and began really substantially repairing their relationship in that two hour period. So yeah, we really were quite moved by not to mention that hundreds of just stories and connections we saw being shared and made at every individual table. And we surveyed people afterward and people indicated just this increase in their hope and their energy and confidence that they can do something about some of the sadness or disengagement or distance that they've been feeling from others in their community. So it was really a powerful hopeful experience for us as well as for people in the communities. I think,
Ellen Wolter:
I don't know if you follow the Trust for Civic Life, they have some recent research that's come out and one of the pieces of research I really connected with is how few spaces there are for people to connect and have these conversations where they're looking each other in the eyes and it's institutions like the Humanity Center and Extension and Foundations that need to work on providing these spaces for people. Otherwise they're just not there anymore.
Tryg Throntveit:
Well, I agree, but I want to add, TA taught me this wonderful improv technique. Yes, and yes, and it is important that organizations like the Humanity Center or Danger Boat don't irrigate to themselves the power to create those spaces, but instead go out into communities and give them the confidence that you can create these spaces. You can go to Denny's and have breakfast with people and that is one of these spaces. So yes, we have a duty to, in spaces we control, bring people in so that they can be treated as those third spaces. One of the things Tane and certainly my CEO, Kevin Lindsay Parker is really committed to is spreading the message that you don't actually need us to create those spaces for you. We have created one, but the best impact is for you to then realize that, oh, we can do this work. Whether the Humanity Center in Danger book is here or not, it might not be, the jokes might not be as funny. Yeah, maybe they'll be funny.
Tane Danger:
They probably will be more on point for the town.
Tryg Throntveit:
They might be more so. I agree. But I think there's an important next step, which is to really build civic capacity. It can't just be giving spaces to people. It has to be about encouraging and fostering the ability for people to turn whatever spaces they have into those types of spaces.
Ellen Wolter:
Yeah, fair enough. That makes sense too.
Tane Danger:
And again, this is the thing that I'm so passionate about, those spaces, those opportunities for people to be together face-to-face with each other ought to also be fun, like inviting spaces that people want to be at. And again, I do, I know that there's people who are listening to this who are in the business of trying to help create some of these spaces or this kind of work, and I'm just like, my plea to you, y'all and myself included, is that we lean into that these can be positive, fun, joyful places that people laugh together and they tell jokes that we don't have to sort of have a PowerPoint presentation to open every time we ask people to come together. And I'm so much a believer in inviting people and offering people ways to connect that are not asking them to do work, but asking them to have fun together. Because I think that you actually learn a lot more about another person. You and they are having fun together, frankly, than when you are doing work together.
Ellen Wolter:
Well, I love all of that. I would just like to propose karaoke sketches of Minnesota
Tryg Throntveit:
Third
Ellen Wolter:
Year. Could we do that?
Tryg Throntveit:
I did not bribe her.
Ellen Wolter:
Oh, you already even thinking about it. Yes.
Tryg Throntveit:
She loves after every show. I wanted the whole cast to go out for karaoke. I might have to do a little fundraising, but I'll find a way. You can be the karaoke.
Ellen Wolter:
I'll be the backup singer. At least.
Tane Danger:
I like this. I do feel like if we did that, I think that there would need to be something where it's like, hey, we would have to lean into duets, right? Because it's about bringing people together. So you would want a lot of duets or multi people, things.
Tryg Throntveit:
Queen.
Tane Danger:
A lot of Queen, a lot of Abba.
Ellen Wolter:
Yeah. Yeah. Probably going to have to fit in a little country in there too.
Tane Danger:
Yeah.
Tryg Throntveit:
Oh sure.
Ellen Wolter:
Yeah.
Tryg Throntveit:
We can do every genre, rock country and country rock, all of them.
Ellen Wolter:
One of the other things I wanted to ask you is what are things that surprised you on your road trip out across the state? What are things that maybe challenged your assumptions that you thought, oh, that's really surprising. I didn't know that about my state.
Tane Danger:
Yeah, I mean there's a lot of those. I mean, there's a way in which every place we went had something like that. When you go to different communities, the center of gravity feels different in different places. So we went to International Falls, and there's a way in which International Falls does feel like they are thinking more about how are we doing with our Canadian neighbors? As much as they're thinking about what's going on in Minneapolis, right? It's much more present for them. What's happening right on the other side of the border that changes your perception of where your brain is putting energy. And then this is a very, very meaningful, I promise I will make this story quick. So we did a show in Waite Park-St. Cloud, and it was honestly somewhere where people said to us, there's a lot of issues going on in the Waite Park, St. Cloud, a lot of things around race, and there's some serious stuff that people in that community are dealing with and challenging. Absolutely. Totally true. And it was one of the places that we heard most distinctly, I feel, from people of color who participated in that. Yes, we know, trust us, we know, and this is our community too, and we really love this place for these reasons, and we are part of that story, and we don't want somebody telling that story about us. For us. We'll tell you about the hard things, but we also want to tell you about the really great, amazing things. If you listen and ask people what matters to them, you get things that are different than maybe the narrative that you hear from somebody else telling you what you're going to hear when you get there.
Tryg Throntveit:
I think also the incredible cultural richness of this state, even the smallest towns have their lore and their multiple reasons that people are there. People aren't stuck places. I'm not saying no one in Minnesota feels stuck in a rut or something, but there is stuff going on in these towns that people are creating for themselves and for their neighbors and sustaining for themselves and for their neighbors, really precious common cultural goods.
Ellen Wolter:
And as we talked about before, it's not part of our dominant narratives, right? It's not that opportunity to share that culture in those small towns. So this podcast and the work that I focus on is about connections across rural and urban. It's about rural and urban interdependence. It's about this idea that rural and urban need each other and rely on each other in all kinds of ways. So from your standpoint, after doing sketches of Minnesota, do you have any insights about rural urban connections and how we're interdependent?
Tryg Throntveit:
Well, one of the reasons I'm really glad that part of this project is the scripted show at the end that we can share with a statewide audience. My hope is not only that people within communities come to understand one another better, even across their differences, but that people across the state come to understand one another better, even despite their differences. So that people who are very, very concerned, let's say about the environmental impacts of our farming sector, are aware that choices which may be necessary, I'm certainly not going to try to argue someone out of thinking that they're necessary to mitigate those impacts do have trade-offs like real trade-offs for real people who care about their families, care about their town, and actually most of whom really, really care about their environment the same way that others do. Does that mean that we don't do anything about agricultural runoff? No, but it means that we have to approach these issues, being honest and honest with and generous toward one another and understanding that these are tough issues because they do involve tradeoffs and we are connected and interdependent. And so I hope that people in even just a small way, are awakened to that fact and that their curiosity is awakened so that they try to learn more about those issues.
Tane Danger:
But I'm having a hard time coming up with something more clever or nuanced to say than the state doesn't work if they don't have multiple parts, we don't have the rule in the urban parts. It doesn't work anymore. I mean, that's something that I've known, I guess as a policy matter for a long time. But when you're out there and you talk to people about, well, where is it that you ship your goods to go somewhere or you're in the more metropolitan region and you talk about what is it that you love about this state? And they're naming mostly things that are in greater Minnesota a lot of times. Or you talk to people about what are the industries that are working and are growing and how much almost all of them are in some way interconnected between the rural and the urban communities. There's a way in which you just walk around and you're like, well, yeah, obviously this thing only works if we are all working on it together.
Tane Danger:
And yet we create these narratives in these stories that there's somehow some dividing line and this is working for this place and this isn't working for this place, or this is what matters for a rural community, and that has nothing to do with what we care about here in the metropolitan area. That's something that we've created at the end of the day. For me personally, just over and over again, it did feel like the consistency of what people care about, what they love, what they value, what they worry about are way more consistent than they are different. And this is something that I think is really, really important for people wherever they are listening to this to think about is you spend time with people talking to them about some of those issues. And it is very, very rare, if ever, that we found an issue that is a divisive issue that people weren't thinking about pretty deeply and had not had conversations about.
Tane Danger:
That's not the way that it's always presented in the media, and it's not the way that we always tell those stories, but generally, overwhelmingly, we found people are thinking about this, they're aware of the trade-offs, they know what's going on, and I think that that should just be pretty humbling for all of us in how we approach some of those things. And that we as citizens of the state or citizens of the country approach it with quite a bit of humility. And we start by listening to folks. It doesn't mean that we have to agree with them, but I think that we owe it to each other to really try and listen to what people are telling us before we start talking about what is more important than something else.
Ellen Wolter:
One of the things that I think is unusual the way that you've talked about some of these communities or really all of these communities, is that there's division in the communities, and I assume some of that division is political division within these communities, whether it's a small town of 500 or a Waite Park St. Cloud, that's 70-80,000. Because the story that's usually told is there's division between the metro and Greater Minnesota. And I think what you're telling is what I found, which is a more accurate story, that there's division in each individual community and people are trying to navigate that. So it's less about that rural urban division, although that's of course there, but it's much more complicated.
Tryg Throntveit:
The electoral maps that we see every four or two years obscure, so much political pluralism in all of our communities, there was not one single place where it was even close to everyone thinking this way or that about particular parties, particular issues, particular candidates. I mean, might it have been 60 40, 65, 35 maybe, but that's a lot of difference
Tane Danger:
In the community. And even within those 60-40, if you've got a community where 60% of the people are voting on a presidential ballot or a state legislative ballot one way or the other, there is all kinds of division and complexity within that 60% of where they fall on particular issues and what is most important to them and how they are deciding X, Y, and Z or the other thing. And that is true for Democrats, republicans, independents, and it's one of the things that I get really animated about because people do just sort of imagine, oh, well, those people all just vote this way. And so I know exactly how they are top to bottom, and I'm going to just tell you, no, you don't. No, people are complicated and complex and they are not like a box checking and across the political spectrum pretty much that I think we experienced in this project.
Tane Danger:
And other things that I do are a constellation of different political views, and they might be very conservative on this thing and surprisingly liberal on this thing. But again, we don't actually discover a lot of that because we don't talk to people or we talk to them long enough to find out who they voted for in the last election, and they're like, well, now I know what I need to know. And it's like, actually, you might find out you all have a lot of stuff that you actually maybe aligned with or you care about, and you could actually maybe do something together, but you got to talk past maybe just like that one first thing to get to, what do you care about? What is meaningful to you? What do you want to see in the world? And from there, you can go somewhere together.
Ellen Wolter:
Well, thank you so much, Tane and Tryg. I really appreciate learning about this work and kudos to the both of you for this work you're doing across the state. Really excited about the second year. I will be at the final show wherever it is, so I'll be sure to stop by and say hi. Thank you for listening to Side-by-Side. We welcome your emails at Side-by-side at umn.edu. Side-by-side is a production of the University of Minnesota Extension and is written and hosted by me, Ellen Wolter. Special thanks to Jan Jecelua who designed our wonderful logo and Jim Griswold who sings and plays guitar in our opening and closing credits.
Singer:
Really doesn't matter at all.
Ellen Wolter:
You can find episodes of side-by-side wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back next week with another episode. I'm Ellen Wolter, and this is Side-by-Side
Singer:
Song, side by Side.