Arts Pilots (Premiered Summer 2025)
Season Highlights • 11,000+ PBS App streams in the first 60 days, surpassing campaign goals • 3.3 million social video views driven by vertical video and chef-centered collaborations • 23 collaborative social posts with featured chefs and local food influencer Kim Ly Curry to reach food-forward audiences • James Beard Media Award win in the “Lifestyle Visual Media” category and a Season 6 national mention in The New York Times • National Daytime Emmy Award nomination in the “Outstanding Regional Content in a Daytime Genre” category • Live activations at Cooks of Crocus Hill and Minnesota Monthly’s GrillFest brought audiences offline and into community Beyond the numbers, Season 6 emphasized a more intentional storytelling lens: food as autobiography. Episodes explored generational recipes, cultural inheritance, and the idea that a kitchen can be both archive and altar. Viewers noticed, cementing “Relish” as a series rooted not just in taste, but in identity.
Relish Season 6 (Premiered June 2025)
Designed for YouTube audiences, Twin Cities PBS piloted a series of arts concepts intended to test new formats, elevate emerging voices, and experiment with more personal, community-centered storytelling. These projects reflect a shift toward faster incubation, audience discovery, and collaboration with Minnesota creatives. • Kid Critics: Young art lovers step into arts spaces as on-camera reviewers, offering fresh perspectives on Minnesota’s cultural scene and giving permission to audiences of all ages to become art connoisseurs in their own right. • Art in the Every Day: What role does art play in helping society function? The pilot episode follows prosthetics artists, tracing how the Twin Cities became a national hub for prosthetics dating back to the 1800s, and how creative practice intersects with medicine, identity, and lived experience. • Wild Muse: Arts journalist and equestrian Kate Nelson explores the cultural connection and technique behind equine representation in contemporary and historical art, blending visual storytelling, field reporting, and personal inquiry. • Daily Practice: An intimate glimpse into creative rituals and the daily habits that sustain self-expression. Each short follows a subject through the rhythms of their day — clipping on an apron, making coffee, feeding an animal — small moments that reveal the comfort and aspiration of maintaining a creative habit. • House of Our Stories: As Minnesota’s Latino community works to establish the state’s first Latino museum, this short film follows Aaron Johnson-Ortiz and community leaders preparing a landmark exhibition of larger-than-life alebrijes (vibrant Mexican folk art scultptures) on Raspberry Island in St. Paul — a story about identity, legacy, and building a home for shared memory.
“Relish” entered FY25 with momentum and delivered one of the most successful seasons in the show’s history. Hosted by Chef Yia Vang, the series blended food, memory, and identity into a storytelling format that felt unmistakably Minnesotan. In a moment when public media’s future was uncertain, “Relish” provided something powerful: joy, discovery, and a reminder of the cultures and communities that make this state extraordinary. This season reframed “Relish” as a binge-worthy streaming experience, meeting viewers where they already find culinary inspiration — from Instagram Reels and TikTok to YouTube and the PBS App. The campaign found new audiences and successfully repositioned the show as a cornerstone of the arts and culture portfolio from Twin Cities PBS, one that gained national recognition with a James Beard Media Award® win and a Daytime Emmy® nomination.
I think these programs remind us of where we come from as a community, invite us to look around and see neighbors and places in a new light.” – Twin Cities PBS Viewer, 2025 Legacy Survey
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