Mary Edwards

The Luminary Center for the Arts opened in 2007 and strives to provide a platform for the presentation of innovative art, music and cultural projects.

Its temporary exhibition space now hosts Social Security, a constellation of five galleries individually curated by area alternative spaces which have shuttered or shifted in form within the past year.

Among other things, the exhibition explores the how the arts community is evolving.

Songbird Café is a local St. Louis production which features songwriters playing and sharing stories about their own music and an audience intent on listening in an intimate environment.

Steve St. Cyr, a recently retired accountant, is the organizer and producer of Songbird Café, which for the past year, takes place at the Focal Point in Maplewood on an almost monthly basis.

St. Cyr got the inspiration for his project from the Bluebird Café in Nashville, Tennessee – a listening room which has launched the career of several well-known music artists.

John Seigenthaler is a journalist and champion of the First Amendment.  He was previously an editor and publisher of The Tennessean in Nashville and was the founding editorial director of USA Today.  Prior, he served as a special assistant to Robert F. Kennedy during the 1960s, when Kennedy served as U.S. Attorney General. 

During his time as a special assistant, Seigenthaler was involved and injured while trying to protect some of the freedom riders in Alabama.