Upcoming Events
Wednesdays, February 11, 18; Tuesday, February 24; Wednesday, March 4 | 5:30–6:30 PM
Artist Assembly: Deep Dive Sessions
Last December we hosted our Artist Assembly, a bi-annual gathering for anyone in the Kansas City area who identifies as an artist, culture bearer, or artist organizer. Through facilitated conversations and collaborative working sessions, the Assembly surfaces the needs of our creative community and identifies shared resources, strategies, and opportunities. This February and early March, we continue conversations started in the Artist Assembly with four Artist Assembly: Deep Dives. Occurring weekly over the course of the month for one-hour sessions, we invite artists and organizers to engage deeply with specific issues shaping our local arts ecosystem, from exhibition making and arts writing to funding models and community care. Each session stands alone, but together they form a collective inquiry into how we build power, sustainability, and connection in Kansas City’s creative community.Deep Dive 1: Critical Arts Writing in Kansas City
Moderated by Nyonu Branch-Watkins (Fortresses Magazine) Wednesday, February 11, 2026 This Deep Dive focuses on critical arts writing in Kansas City: how artists and writers talk about art, who gets to participate in those conversations, and how criticism can be more accessible, ethical, and responsive to lived experience. Writers, artists, arts educators, and non-writers are warmly encouraged to attend. Participants will have the opportunity to share perspectives, name challenges, and identify what kinds of mentorship, programming, and support would make engaging in critical and interdisciplinary writing more viable. Outcomes: Shared language, peer connection, and a role in shaping future arts writing resources and programming in Kansas City. RSVP HEREDeep Dive 2: Innovative Funding Beyond Competitive Grants
Wednesday, February 18, 2026 During this Deep Dive session, participants are invited to discuss current funding structures available to working artists in the greater Kansas City area and imagine alternatives to project-based competitive grant cycles that help build sustainable income streams and generational wealth. RSVP HEREDeep Dive 3: Community Care in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Tuesday, February 24, 2026 During this Deep Dive session, participants are invited to discuss current challenges and potential solutions to whole body care within the creative community. Time will be given to discuss the ways that artificial intelligence and surveillance technology impacts well-being. RSVP HereDeep Dive 4: Participatory Exhibition
With Elizabeth Spavento, Charlotte Street Co-Director Wednesday, March 4, 2026, 5:30–6 PMDuring this Deep Dive session, participants are invited to review four exhibition proposals by Charlotte Street Co-Director, Elizabeth Spavento. Potential exhibitions include a participatory biennial featuring artists under 18 from the Charlotte Street neighborhood; An exhibition featuring analog technologies with artist-led coalition S.H.I.T.P.H.O.N.E or Scathing Hated of Information Technology and the passionate Hemorrhaging of Our Neo-Liberal Experience; From Away: a group show that pairs Kansas City-based artists with artists from Maine; and Elders to the Front! An exhibition that features artworks by artists 55 and older. All participants will vote on their favorite proposal which is slated to open in November 2026. The remaining time will be spent collaborating on ideas for public programming to take place throughout the exhibition.
RSVP HERE
Thursday, February 19, 2026 from 6–7:30 PM
Beyond the Studio: Chantel Guzmán-Cupil
Beyond the Studio will feature photographer Chantel Guzman-Cupil and her exploration of the exhibition Edra Soto: the place of dwelling.
Experience the Kemper Museum’s collections through the unique perspectives of Kansas City contemporary artists! Charlotte Street Studio Residents will highlight their favorite objects on view in connection with their own artistic practices.
-
This event is FREE but seating is limted – registration required
-
ABOUT CHANTEL GUZMAN CUPIL
Chantel Guzman-Cupil is a Latinx documentary photographer currently based in Kansas City. Chantel has been greatly influenced by their parent’s experience as immigrants as well as their own experience as a Latinx living in the Midwest. Their work aims to address themes of immigration, family, identity, and isolation. Chantel is currently a Studio Resident at the Charlotte Street.
-
Click here for information on how to get to the Museum and where to find our paid parking lots. Parking is Free for Supporting Members, and ample free street parking is also available around the Museum.
Thursday, February 26, 2026 from 7:30-9:00 PM
ProdoLAB: Zee Underscore: Confessions from the Growing Season
Step into dreamy oasis of greenery as vines, trees, plants and flowers envelop the Charlotte Street Stern Theater in our first ProdoLAB of the year—Zee Underscore: Confessions from the Growing Season.
Start the experience by grabbing a compostable planter, design it to your liking with markers and grab your seat. Zee Underscore will be performing, and speaking between each song—sharing a confession with the audience. Zee will describe her experience that inspired the confession along with the valuable lesson that has been vital to her growth this season. After each confession, Zee will invite the audience to chant with her: "When I say, GROWING, you say SEASON. GROWING-SEASON, GROWING-SEASON," then transition to the next song.Then Zee will invite her guest speaker to lead a demonstration on how to plant and grow seeds will also sharing lessons about growing. Zee will be taking notes live on a whiteboard. Guests will also be inviteed to come up and fill their pots with soil and seeds, label the seeds and return to to their seats. Using the notes collected, Zee will then perform a freestyle song about planting and growing.
After the performance, stick around for a Q&A with the artists.
Tuesday, March 3, 2026 from 6:00-7:00 PM
2026 Studio Residency Info Session
Interested in applying to our Studio Residency Program but need help getting started? We’re hosting an in-person info session on Tuesday, March 3 to answer your most burning questions about the jury process, how to apply on Submittable, tips for your application, and more. Join us for an additional campus tour of Charlotte Street’s new studio and rehearsal spaces with Charlotte Street Studio Residency and Program Manager, Pat Alexander.ABOUT CHARLOTTE STREET’S STUDIO RESIDENCY PROGRAM
Charlotte Street’s Studio Residency Program provides free studio and rehearsal spaces to a mixed-disciplinary cohort of exceptional artists for two-year-long terms. Charlotte Street encourages creative production, artistic experimentation, professional development, and community building. The program fosters CSF’s values of risk-taking, openness, excellence, and collaboration by creating an environment where artists use the platforms and resources available to meet personal goals and career milestones. The 2025 Studio Residents are selected through a competitive juried portfolio process. Learn more here. Applications are due Friday, March 20, 2026, at 11:59 PM (CST) The two-year term begins June 21, 2026.Wednesday, March 4, 2026 from 7:00–9:30 PM
Voice, Body, Song Workshop w/ The Hinterlands
Join Detroit-based experimental theatre ensemble The Hinterlands for a free 2.5-hour workshop on Wednesday, March 4th, at Charlotte Street exploring their unique method for creating highly visceral theatrical works.The Hinterlands training engages the body and voice to unlock creative potential and find energy, presence, and imagination. Break out of habitual patterns and uncover new possibilities as we embark on a collective journey of radical physical and vocal exploration. The workshop will conclude with The Hinterlands’ work on traditional songs as a way of exploring lineage and history. Ideal for performers, artists of any type, and anyone with a curiosity about embodied practice or looking for imaginative ways to collectively organizeSaturday, March 7, 2026 at 7:30 PM
Sunset: A Cyber Lament by The Hinterlands
Above: Liza Bielby as the Faery King in Sunset: A Cyber Lament by The Hinterlands (photo by Paul Biundo)
Down into the Digital Otherworld journeys a virtuosic singer in search of his lost soul, which was spirited away by an enchanting and mischievous technological force. This singer - let’s call him Orpheus - travels deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of the Internet as he tries to become whole again - dodging data mining, ring light-eyed wellness gurus, troves of mind-numbing content, and ever-changing terms and conditions. Will he make it out of the digital labyrinth before he forgets his humanity forever? Inspired by medieval retellings of the Orpheus myth and our collective internet-driven madness, Sunset weaves technologies old and new - mask performance, live video mixing, AI chatbots, electronic music, lamentations, spirit talking, Victorian illusion and more - into a music-driven terrifying and embodied work that mythologizes our relationship with technology, and how it has changed and shaped our imagination. Join The Hinterlands and video artist Renee Willoughby in the Otherworld of ones and zeroes as we wrestle our souls back from the trickster in the black box and break the spell that traps us in the algorithm. —About Sunset: A Cyber Lament
Sunset: A Cyber Lament is an original performance by The Hinterlands, created by Liza Bielby, Jenna Kirk, Richard Newman, and Renee Willoughby with Jessica Annunziata. With Richard Newman as Orpheus, Liza Bielby as the Fairy King, Renee Willoughby as Persephone, Jessica Annunziata as Hermes, and Jenna Kirk as the Medium. Directed by Richard Newman. Scenic design by Jenna Kirk. Sound design by Richard Newman. Video design and live video mixing by Renee Willoughby. Magical dramaturgy by Matt Cosper. Sunset: A Cyber Lament was produced with support by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and with a DEEP Space Residency in May 2025 at North American Cultural Laboratory.About The Hinterlands
The Hinterlands (Detroit/Waawiyaataanong) creates performances and events pressing into the unknown areas of our personal and collective history with fearless physicality and a sense of humor. We engage in an ongoing ecstatic physical and vocal training practice that is the foundation of our collaborative devising process, and a means of conducting exchanges across disciplines. Through our daily, ongoing research into the body, the voice, and the lineages that shape us, and through sharing these practices with the public, we seek to transform ourselves, to uncover just and equitable ways of being in community with one another, and to shepherd the futures of our collective wildest imaginings into practice. Since our founding in 2009, we have created eight full-length theatrical works and dozens of public projects, from intimate participatory “utopian dinners” at flea markets, to live-streamed take-out competitions between neighborhood restaurants, to fictional radical archives that explode into the poetic, to works of multi-national grassroots theatrical diplomacy. Our work has been seen at Shanghai Biennale (Shanghai, China), The John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI), The Flynn Center (Burlington, VT), Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (Detroit, MI), the Berlinale (Berlin, Germany), Co-Prosperity Sphere (Chicago, IL), Double Edge Theatre (Ashfield, MA), Alverno Presents (Milwaukee, WI), Teatri Dodona (Pristina, Kosovo), P! (NYC), and White Night (Chengdu, China), among other locales large and small. thehinterlands.orgWednesday, March 18, 2026 from 7:30-9 PM
EMAS Presents—March 2026
EMAS Presents is an experimental and improvised music series curated by Seth Andrew Davis + Evan Verploegh. An extension of the collective Extemporaneous Music & Arts Society, EMAS Presents highlights local, national, and international music practitioners to grow Kansas City’s improvised music community.Saturday, March 26, 2026 from 3:00-5:00 PM
Artist Market—March 2026
Charlotte Street hosts a quartely pop-up vendor market featuring a curated selection of Kansas City’s creative entrepreneurs and organizations. Come join us and explore a breadth of offerings for sale, from ceramics to books, wearables, prints, as well as local resources. The rotation of vendors, resources, and performers changes for each iteration. Check back here soon to see who we will have offerings from!Interested in participated in Charlotte Street’s Artist Markets for 2026? Fill out the 2026 Artist Market Interest Form.
Thursday, April 2, 2026 from 7:30-9:00 PM
ProdoLAB—April 2026
ProdoLAB is a bimonthly experimental platform in partnership with musician/composer Eddie Moore that pairs Kansas City time-based artists, producers, and musicians to collaborate on a new piece for a one-night-only showcase at Charlotte Street. Each performance is followed by a Q&A session with the artists.Saturday, April 25, 2026 from 3:00-10:00 PM
2026 Open Studios with Charlotte Street Studio Residents
Charlotte Street’s Studio Residency Program opens its doors on Saturday, April 25, 2026 for its annual Open Studios event. This free community event will be located at Charlotte Street’s campus from 3:00 to 10:00 PM.
Visitors will enjoy a behind-the-scenes look at the creative process for many of the most forward-thinking emerging and mid-career artists in Kansas City. This free campus-wide event is an opportunity to meet with artists and enjoy free performances and readings throughout the day. Meet Charlotte Street's 31 visual artists, writers, and performers in their studios for this once-a-year opportunity!
Wednesday, May 6, 2026 from 7:30-9 PM
EMAS Presents—May 2026
EMAS Presents is an experimental and improvised music series curated by Seth Andrew Davis + Evan Verploegh. An extension of the collective Extemporaneous Music & Arts Society, EMAS Presents highlights local, national, and international music practitioners to grow Kansas City’s improvised music community.Saturday, May 23, 2026 from 3:00-5:00 PM
Artist Market—May 2026
Charlotte Street hosts a quartely pop-up vendor market featuring a curated selection of Kansas City’s creative entrepreneurs and organizations. Come join us and explore a breadth of offerings for sale, from ceramics to books, wearables, prints, as well as local resources. The rotation of vendors, resources, and performers changes for each iteration. Check back here soon to see who we will have offerings from!Interested in participated in Charlotte Street’s Artist Markets for 2026? Fill out the 2026 Artist Market Interest Form.