The World's Game, on Our Home Turf Over the past few weeks, Kansas City has found itself in a rare position: not just watching the World Cup from afar but participating in it as one of the handful of American cities selected to host. These past few weeks for me have served as a powerful indicator that the Heartland isn't relegated to the sidelines... we are, in fact, a major player in the game. For a region too often written off as "flyover country," getting this much primetime in the global...

by Jessie Sanders, RDI, NCIDQ heartland@retaildesigninstitute.org The RDI Heartland Group stands outside the entrance to Atlas9 with guest presenter Randall Statler, Executive Creative Director at Dimensional Innovations. Photo Credit: Maximus Coric Walking into Atlas 9 last week felt a little like stepping back into my own childhood—if my childhood had included a few more interdimensional anomalies. One of my very first jobs was working concessions at the local dollar movie theater. I can...

Something about this day in May always makes me think of galaxies far, far away… Is it just me, or does space travel seem to be in the midst of a new moment? Between the excitement surrounding the recent Artemis II mission—marking humanity’s return to the moon for the first time in more than half a century—and the box office success of the Ryan Gosling crowd-pleaser Project Hail Mary (which somehow takes the apocalypse and turns it into something not only joyful but life-affirming)… people...