Diversity : Featured Stories

Baltimore's emerging hip hop and urban culture scene has gotten its own voice with True Laurels. Founder Lawrence Burney is hosting a free event with live local music and visual art April 6.

An ambitious redevelopment plan is underway in the Northwest section of Baltimore. Park Heights is getting new senior housing a ball field and interest from private developers. Neighborhood residents are also receiving home-buying, tutoring and other services that are funded with slots money. 

After struggling to find a job during the recession, Marta Ines Quintana was forced to switch gears. She parlayed her culinary and marketing skills to form a food business that draws on her family's Cuban heritage. She started a prepared food business and opened a Towson cafe. Next on her agenda: a TV cooking show. 

SquashWise is part of a growing urban squash movement that is teaching students to excel on and off the courts. The Baltimore nonprofit now wants its rackets to reach three times as many students in the coming years as it builds on its track record of achievement. 

A handful of women entrepreneurs have opened trendy fashion boutiques in Baltimore within the past year. By keeping prices and expenses low, using social media to promote the stores and staying ahead of the fashion curve, they hope to hang on by more than a thread as they ride out the bumpy economy.

Bmore Media Managing Photographer Arianne Teeple captures notable architectural details and exhibits at the 167-year-old Maryland Historical Society museum and library in this photo essay. She highlights pieces from the Mount Vernon attraction's folk art collection and an exhibit that takes a look at Maryland’s role in the Civil War. She also takes photos from its War of 1812 collection, which will take on greater significance this year as 2012 marks the war's 200-year anniversary.

You can call the world your home. You can care about more than one place and learn lessons that apply globally from highly localized, community-oriented action. Open Society Institute-Baltimore operates with the goal of letting underserved communities know that they matter. Today, OSI-Baltimore announces its 14^th class of Community Fellows.