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Jim Lasko had a failure to ignite—literally—in front of thousands of people. As a Loeb Fellow and executive artistic director of Chicago-based Redmoon Theater, Jim conceived a major public festival to commemorate the Great Chicago Fire. Unfortunately, when the time came, there was no great fire – not even a good one.

Jim shares his story of failure and redemption, and his determination to come back stronger than ever this week on “Knight Cities.”

Here are five things you should know from my conversation with Jim:

1. Don’t allow preparation for failure keep you from going all out to succeed.

2. Give yourself enough time to succeed.

3. We are accustomed to seeing tech failures, but we don’t have the same tolerance for civic and artistic failure. We have to allow failure, even in public.

4. Salvation comes from service. Even when you stumble, you can take solace in the fact that you are in service to an idea and a community.

5. Doing something new requires a certain courage and readiness to fail. (That’s why the Great Chicago Fire Festival will occur again later this year.)

Listen to my conversation with Jim here. And sign up for the “Knight Cities” newsletter to get alerts as soon as new conversations are posted.

Look for new “Knight Cities” content posted every Wednesday here. You can follow us on Twitter at #knightcities or @knightfdn. And if you have ideas for people you’d like to hear more from, please email me.

Carol Coletta is vice president of community and national initiatives at Knight Foundation. Follow her on Twitter @ccoletta.