Today we’d like to introduce you to Robyne Robinson.
Hi Robyne, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I wanted to be a journalist since watching the Watergate Hearings in 1972. I was about 12. I came from an arts and politics family. When I discovered that broadcasting had an element of surrealist theater with journalism, I knew it’s what I wanted to do. By high school, I was able to talk my way into working at newspapers and magazines, interning and working my way up to copy editor and writer. In college, I won an opportunity to work at the local NBC station and learned everything I could about broadcast writing and production, as well as the importance of networking – I think that really was the key to landing my first reporter job in Indiana… a bizarre story about a kidnapping was seen nationwide and I was offered a reporter’s spot in Southeast Virginia, where I was one of the first women to cover the Atlantic Fleet in Norfolk and Virginia Beach. I covered events like the US attack on Libya and interviewed up and coming national starts – like a little-known Bill Clinton. Ambitious, I traded up for a City Hall beat in Dallas, then added producer and host duties for one of my first local talk shows. Surprisingly I interviewed stars before they were stars: The late great jazz trumpeter Roy Haynes while he was in high school. A 19-year-old Erykah Badu who was a regular on a kids show. And Edie Brickell when she was still part of The New Bohemians. She joined the band after being dared to jump onstage and sing with them at a college party. From Dallas to Baltimore, where I anchored weekends and met John Waters, who owned a bar on Charles Street and kept Depeche Mode on the jukebox. I fell in love with a Minnesota I met at a Josephine Baker film fest at the Baltimore Museum of Art, and followed him back to the Land of 10,000 lakes where I lucked up on a reporter job at KMSP. I showed up on a Greyhound bus, recently let go in a mass purge at the station in Baltimore. I was happy to be back in the Midwest because I believed if I understood the people, I could do well – and it was true. I covered gang summits, gay rights advocacy and police misconduct… I also saw the Twin Cities was a creative incubator of amazing talent and ideas that could expand what the arts would mean to the community. It was about the time I was asked to be the station’s (and the Twin Cities’) first African American prime time anchor that I helped create the idea for The Buzz. The 3 minute segment became an important staple in the local arts community and an important signature for KMSP. Over time it grew to an 8 minute spot that won a Emmy, Music Awards, recognition from, international and national arts media and print and the ultimate compliment – complete access to the late Prince Rogers Nelson. It helped shape the trajectory of my 20 + years TV news, which resulted in numerous awards – including the MN Broadcasting Hall of Fame, where I am the first and only African American inducted into its roles. After leaving Fox 9, I ran for Lt. Governor of MN – only the second African American to seek higher office in the state and settled down as Art Director for Mpls-St. Paul International Airport, creating amazing programming and public art installations that helped make the airport one of the best in the country and voted one of the most beautiful terminals in the world by national travel bloggers. I used those seven years of experience to create my own art consulting firm, five X five which currently has several projects underway in the Twin Cities, such as the 7-story Prince mural in Downtown Minneapolis, and the restoration of the historic Coliseum Building in the Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis. The 72,000 sq. ft. building was heavily damaged in the uprising following the murder of bar bouncer George Floyd. When restored it will be an arts destination on the city’s southeast side.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The road for an African American woman in the corporate world is never smooth. It’s fraught with racism, sexism, ageism and people who lack the vision of the bigger picture – how new ideas can cross-pollinate to create change that people want. It’s inclusion of a diverse group of people to tell a different story about a community’s history and where it’s going. Now try doing that when someone only sees you as a commodity, a piece of ass, an affirmative action hire. I was baptized into a field that was dominated by men and women had to adapt, like most women in broadcasting, in order to survive. You learn to become a subversive cog in a bureaucratic machine – finding ways to slip in stories of marginalized communities in relation to the bigger story happening that day. You learn to network in the community in order to survive in the corporate world. I was lucky enough to belong to a very select and privileged sorority of black women in broadcasting and proud of my track record in the field despite the racism and misogyny that accompanies it. I think the added struggle now is to create meaningful news programming that people can identify with and use in their life decisions. They’re burned out on the 24 news cycle with limited focus, repetition and lack of balance. Information without representation will not work for the news giants or the local stations.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Currently, my strongest role is as an arts consultant. Although I am a lapidary artist that designs and creates jewelry, I’ve pulled back some on that avenue of my work. I think it’s very challenging and almost heroic work to produce public art. The act of creating and producing a vision that has purpose for the community and for artists excites me. It has the feeling of an old movie where a bunch of teens want to produce something new and alive, and they put together an amazing performance in an old barn, make the costumes out burlap sacks and the school band starts playing swing – and suddenly Judy Garland sings, and the burlap sacks become costumes and the band blooms into an orchestra. Networking, collaborating, producing can be very powerful and an act of legacy building for everyone involved. What a great feeling for someone to stop on the street and see something they had a hand in creating that will forever reflect the people and the history of a community. Creating a meeting place, a town hall, a sanctuary for safety, for peace. A place that creates a visceral response, I call it ’emotional equity’, and it’s about the greatest feeling in the world when it comes together, like my work at MSP Airport. I was instrumental in the development of Jen Lewin’s beautiful digital sculpture in Terminal One, The three works of flight and northern lights at Terminal Two and the tiled entryways to the restrooms in both buildings. What sets my work apart is that I intimately know the artists I work with and I work for them to make certain their contributions are respected. Nothing is every just a project. Trust is always an important factor in all the work I do – whether anchoring or reporting the news, owning and curating an art gallery like flatland or planning public art. If people don’t trust you they won’t work with you and that word will spread like wildfire.
Are there any apps, books, podcasts, blogs or other resources you think our readers should check out?
The books that have helped shape my critical thinking are E.F. Schumacher’s “Small is Beautiful” and Herman Hesse’s “Siddhartha”. They changed my life. Google is a mainstay – not Bing. I hate Bing. I watch a little CNN, read the New York Times and Hyperallergic every morning and have Pandora set to shuffle. And a smoothie or Red Bull before I start work. I like my own blog (www.fivexfiveart.com)., which is about art and design and features interviews and links to electronic artists I like. I’m ready to restart my podcast “Black by Design,” which is all about design by Africans and African Americans around the globe and the new avenues for designers to expand into.
Pricing:
- My consulting services start at $110/hour
Contact Info:
- Email: robyne@fivexfiveart.com
- Website: https://www.fivexfiveart.com
- Instagram: @fivexfivepublicartconsultants
- Facebook: @fivexfivepublicart
- Twitter: @fivexfivepubli1
- Youtube: robyne@fivexfiveart.com
Image Credits
Tracy Walsh Photography
KMSP-TV
Callahan and Co. Photography
fiveXfive Public Art Consultants
Robyne Robinson
