Culture

 A fine time was had by all at Springfield PrideFest 2017 this past Saturday.   Check out our photo gallery to relive the fun (or experience it for the first time if you were unable to make it) of the first ever Springfield PrideFest parade including  the drag show, the rock climbing wall, the happy […]

Springfield Ballet Company performs at 6 p.m. in LRS Theater, Hoogland Center for the Arts PHOTOS COURTESY SPRINGFIELD AREA ARTS COUNCIL Springfield Area Arts Council welcomes and encourages you to make the arts part of your plan for this year’s New Year’s Eve. The arts are more than pleasure for the soul. The arts are […]

A stranger visiting Oak Ridge Cemetery on a recent Sunday might have wondered what a tribe of 50 were doing at the Tanner Mausoleum – surely no burial, too much noise, drumming, laughter! Edging close he’d see, and surely stay – but here’s what he’d witness: A group of Neanderthals garbed in skins of sabre-toothed […]

Historians credit Christopher Columbus for finding the Americas, but Kaba Hiawatha Kamene declares that African descendants lived in what is now the United States many years prior to 1492. Kamene, a staff developer at Harriet Tubman Charter School in the Bronx, New York, who has master’s degrees in art history and in Science of Education […]

For the past 25 years, Springfield’s downtown has become a giant party every New Year’s Eve with First Night Springfield, the first and longest-running event of its kind in Illinois. The party continues again to ring in 2013 and showcase the art of central Illinois. It comes at a decent price, too. Penny Wollan-Kriel, executive […]

“We’re grateful that we still have this nice space to be in. It’s really made a big difference to what we’ve been able to deliver to the community,” says Janet Seitz Carlson of the Prairie Art Alliance. This time last year, the Hoogland Center for the Arts, which houses the PAA’s handsome HD Smith Gallery […]

Yes, it’s a little boot scootin’ and a little two-steppin,’ but Prairie Land Dance Club (PLDC) in Illiopolis ain’t your mama’s square dance. Folks at PLDC are just as comfortable sliding through “Sex on the Beach” or “Moves Like Jagger” as they are with local darlin’ (and current contestant on “The Voice”) Gracia Harrison’s yodeling. […]

Architect John Shafer’s new office building at 1230 S. Sixth St. in Springfield recently won an award for sustainable design from the Central Illinois Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Not only is it a “green” building, it is also lovely to behold. It may have caught your eye while under construction during the […]

Every week, Amy Alkon provides IT readers with her spin on romantic problems in her syndicated column The Advice Goddess. The column, which received the first place award for commentary last month from the LA Press Club, can sometimes be as much a sounding board for Alkon’s brassy personality as a forum for practical advice […]

Visitors and residents hungry for good music and good food in Springfield are sure to find some of both this weekend at the 11th annual Taste of Downtown. The popular event is presented this year in conjunction with the Sangamon Valley Roots Revival/Miller Lite Live American Music Show on Saturday, July 10. Springfield boasts more […]

“To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything.” Abraham Lincoln uttered those words in his famous farewell speech to Springfield almost 150 years ago. Since then, Springfield has undergone numerous transformations, riding the tide of change while retaining the pioneer spirit that settled this area in 1818. As the 21st century […]

Just when we thought Rwanda had reinvented itself into a genuine success story in Africa, and that Rwandan president Paul Kagame had become a star of international leadership, along comes the hero of Hotel Rwanda to tell us it isn’t necessarily so. Paul Rusesabagina, portrayed in the 2004 film Hotel Rwanda by actor Don Cheadle, […]