Lindsay Pattan has a theory about downtown. Not a strategy deck or a task force recommendation – a theory. Culture doesn’t follow development. It leads it. People don’t come back to a place because the infrastructure has improved. They come back because they found their people there.
Pattan is the founder of Pattan & Co., a St. Louis-based strategic communications firm and one of the driving forces behind Futuremakers, a new organization built on a belief simple enough to sound obvious and radical enough to actually be rare: that culture is as critical to downtown’s future as any commercial development. The microgrant program she helped launch is one concrete expression of that belief – $250 at a time, handed directly to performing artists willing to show up and do their work downtown.
The numbers from the first weeks are hard to ignore. Futuremakers launched March 4 and within weeks had 101 founding members, 225 in-person participants, 27 venues offering free space to creatives and 23 artist applications generated from a single social media post. The community, as Pattan shared simply, “is here and ready.” They do not need to be convinced to love this city. They need to be invited.
This first grant cycle supported four performing artists: Kendall Davidson from St. John, Toraino Hellems from St. Louis, Anthony Lucius from East St. Louis and Shaelyn Rolf from Downtown St. Louis. Each performs as part of Thursday Nights at The Moniker this spring. The total investment across all four: $1,000. Board member Muhammad Austin described what that number can put on stage. Two-hundred and fifty dollars can be the difference between an artist hiring a music director and fully leaning into their craft, rather than managing every priority alone. When an artist can give their all, he said, that is when life-changing moments happen – for the artist and for the audience.
The Moniker, tucked downtown on Washington Avenue, is not an accidental partner. Walk in and the room does the work – art on the walls, drinks worth lingering over, a stage in the corner and something in the atmosphere that makes people want to come back before they have even left. The grant award event modeled what the whole program is trying to build: speakers, performances, grants awarded and a room full of people who left with new connections and reasons to come back. DJ LWRNC, who relocated from the Bay Area to St. Louis, performed. Artist Ivey Amour performed and curated. A room became a community.
Pattan is not interested in the one-off festival model. A single event drawing 1,000 people is a party. One hundred groups of 10, gathered throughout downtown all year, is culture. No press release ever made that happen. What does is a Thursday night that becomes a habit, while a $250 grant that becomes a career moment somebody talks about for years. Futuremakers is seeking $150,000 to $200,000 in institutional funding – enough to activate 200 events by year’s end. Walking groups, writing clubs, open mics, civic meetups, picnics on the Arch grounds. Two hundred different reasons to come downtown and stay. The math she offers to funders is not complicated: that is roughly the cost of one street festival. Deployed differently, it could fund up to 1,000 activations.
None of this is theoretical for Pattan. She ran a vintage shop in the basement of a record store on Cherokee Street. She held summer pop-ups at Thirteenth and Washington, pooled $50 vendor fees to cover food, drinks, performers and bubbles for the kids, and saw 3,000 people show up for it. She closed the shop, took a corporate role, moved downtown anyway and opened her firm here. She and Kristen Linares, whose salon is now among the city’s best, together hold three downtown leases and run seven-figure businesses. The neighborhood gave them room to figure it out. They stayed.
That is what she wants to make possible for the next generation. Not a campaign but a movement.
“We are encouraging them,” Pattan said, “and reminding them that yes, this place belongs to you just as much as anyone else, regardless of your title or how many years you have been at it.”
The conventional wisdom says downtown comes back through development, investment and infrastructure. Lindsay Pattan is betting it comes back $250 at a time.