Captain Calliope

C4 Atlanta: A Kaiser Permanente Bridge Program Partner

Feb 162011
 

C4 Atlanta is proud to partner with the Kaiser Permanente Bridge Program to provide an affordable health care plan to eligible C4 Atlanta Individual Members. The program is uniquely designed to help uninsured, income-eligible members obtain health care coverage for a low monthly charge for up to 24 months. Eligible members pay a fraction of the premium cost and Kaiser Permanente subsidizes the rest. Coverage includes preventive services, hospitalization, comprehensive pharmacy and more.

Participating artists are expected to use the Bridge Program as an opportunity to grow as thriving, Atlanta-based artists. C4 Atlanta is therefore offering this program only to individual members who have completed or are enrolled in our Entrepreneurship in the Arts class.

By tying professional development with affordable healthcare, Kaiser Permanente and C4 Atlanta aim to help Atlanta Artists build a bridge towards a sustainable creative lifestyle.

Start C4 Atlanta

Jan 282011
 
Atlanta’s technology community is as creative as it is entrepreneurial. Stewarded by organizations like the ATDC at Georgia Tech and a healthy ecosystem of community events, Atlanta’s web startup community is a critical part of Atlanta’s creative economy. One supporting event happening this weekend: StartAtlanta.
At StartAtlanta, a crowd of entrepreneurial digital creatives will listen to nearly a hundred 60-second-long business idea pitches. Attendees will then pick their favorites and begin work on the most viable and interesting of these ideas toward the goal of launching a full blown company by Monday morning!
This idea may sound absurdly ambitious to some. But our city already has a number of success stories from similar events in the past, such as Skribit and Twitpay.
In fact, we’re lucky to have Michael Ivey, the co-founder of Twitpay on the board of C4 Atlanta!
This weekend C4 Atlanta will participate in StartAtlanta, breaking ground on the software foundation that will enable us to grow into an Arts Service Organization that operates much like a Web Startup. By building web software (and pardon the technical jargon) through a Service Oriented Architecture we’ll eventually be able to ‘Appify’ our service offerings.
Our pitch to Start Atlanta will essentially be an invitation to join Michael Ivey, Joe Winter and me in building the first generation of C4 Atlanta’s web service platform. And because events like these present such great opportunities for collaboration, we will also be on the lookout for potential opportunities to support other Start Atlanta projects launching this weekend.
Wish us luck. We’re gearing up for our 60 second business pitch as we speak!

Introducing: Margaret Kargbo

Oct 152010
 

The very first artist I’d like to introduce is Margaret Kargbo! Regarding her interest in participating in the ‘Entrepreneurship in the Arts‘ seminar series, here’s what she had to say:

“For me, it’s an exploratory passion to discover and document the Arts, both traditional and emerging talents. My reality is that, I love the Arts. I always have. Therefore, I would love to attend the workshop so that I may acquire some useful knowledge and tools necessary to making my passion become a reality. Like most starving artists, I have limited funds but unlimited vision, focus and determination. The sky is truly the limit and I hope to see everyone among the stars! This workshop would be a truly wonderful opportunity for me to grow and go confidently in the direction of my dreams.”

When I first spoke with Margaret earlier this week, she went into vast passionate detail about her dream of producing a traveling film documentary project to tell the stories of individuals and communities influenced by African traditions, Black culture, lifestyle and politics. As the conversation progressed, we came to realize just how perfect an opportunity this seminar series is for her!

And so, Margaret has begun working towards her creating her dream film project by interviewing her fellow entrepreneurial artists and helping us share their stories over the next few weeks!

Incidentally, Margaret took part in a short film project two years ago in which she was profiled as an entrepreneur. It’s the perfect introduction to the bubbly Margaret Kargbo, so check it out!

You can help support the efforts of Margaret and her fellow Artists in raising funds for the cost of tuition by donating via their respective profiles in our Artist Gallery.

A Call to Action for Sustainable Artistry

Oct 102010
 

We have all heard it. Some of us even believe it. And even if you don’t, you have to admit that the ‘myth of the starving artist’ is damaging.

During what we call our ‘ecological scan’ of Arts and Culture in Atlanta, we heard time and time again of the cultural sense of low self-esteem intrinsic to being an Atlantan artist. It is a silent assumption that seems to permeate our community. Many of our artists aspire to leave for ‘real’ arts cities such as Boston, Los Angeles or New York City. Some succeed. Brain drain ensues, and the ‘myth of the starving artist’ continues to perpetuate itself throughout our city.

Last month we announced that Kamal Sinclair’s “Entrepreneurship in the Arts”  seminar will be our inaugural professional development offering and earlier this week we invited Tori Tinsley to tell the story about the powerful impact her past participation in this seminar has had in her life.

Since then, the we havn’t been able to stop talking about how stories like this chip away at the ‘myth of the starving artist.’ And since October is ‘Arts Month,’ we’ve decided it’s time for us to do something about this dangerous myth! So here goes:

This is a public call to action!

The C4 Atlanta Action Team wants to start a public dialogue about the lenses through which we Atlantan artists view ourselves in relationship to our city’s cultural identity.

In fact, we would like to see the ‘myth of the starving artist’ done away with entirely! And the best way to start chipping away at myths as domineering and destructive as this one,  is through the telling of new stories that defy rather than give credence to them.

So let’s talk! And let’s tell new stories that will bring the mythos of sustainable artistry to the forefront of our cultural awareness!

Tori’s ‘Entrepreneurship in the Arts’ story has made us realize that right in front of us lies the perfect opportunity to tell these kinds of stories about the artists participating in the ‘Entrepreneurship in the Arts’ seminar.

We need your help in order to make this happen!

Here’s how:

  • We are looking for approximately 10 more artists to join us in this experience. You can help by nominating professional artists and arts managers you think would benefit from participation.
  • Because this is our very first professional development program, there are a number of potentially show stopping startup costs that could keep this seminar from happening. And so we are launching C4 Atlanta’s first major fundraising effort: Help us raise $5000 by October 20th! These funds will help us pay for things like liability insurance as well as invest in infrastructure that will continue to help us in our future professional development offerings.
  • Eleven days is not alot of time to raise $5000. If you are interested in contributing time to help us, shoot me a message! Also consider joining our volunteer mailing list.
  • We’ve met with a number of people interested in multimedia storytelling about the aspirations, successes, and lessons learned of arts entrepreneurs and we think there may be an opportunity for us to bridge some community collaborations. Contact me if you are interested in blogging, filming, and publishing stories about arts entrepreneurship in Atlanta.

Of course, this is just the beginning of a much larger dialogue. From now until the end of October (because it’s Arts Month), we want to invite Atlanta’s artists and arts organizations to join us in exploring, exposing and understanding how the type of thinking ingrained in us by the ’myth of the starving artist’ impacts our lives:

  • Start publicly talking about ‘myth of the starving artist’ with your friends, fellow artists, family, coworkers, counselors, elected officials, etc.
  • Write blog posts, articles and letters to the editor about Atlanta’s cultural identity as relates to the topics of  ’the myth of the starving artist’ and arts entrepreneurship. Share them across the web via Facebook, Twitter, email, and all that jazz.
  • Arts organizations: How does ‘the myth of the starving artist’ impact your work and your missions?
  • Fellow Twitterers, let’s use the following hash tags: #atlarts #starvingartistmyth (example)
  • Send us relevant links to articles written and discussions happening locally and across the web so we can share them on Facebook and Twitter! We may even feature and respond to our favorites via this blog!

As we begin engage in this community dialogue, here’s what the next few weeks looks like for C4 Atlanta:

This week we will begin introducing you to Artists who aspire to support themselves through their artistry. We will find out how the ‘myth of the starving artist’ has impacted their lives, and what they hope to gain from participating in ‘Entrepreneurship in the Arts.’ We aim to raise $5000 by October 20th (donate now) so these artists can begin the next phase of their artistic careers on October 23rd.

And again, this is just the beginning. Come November 1st, who knows where all this will have lead us?

I personally hope having this community dialogue leads us to some Action!

General Update

Jul 182010
 

The C4 Action team spent the past week getting back into action after two weeks of downtime. Jessyca had a much needed vacation with her family, I had minor outpatient on my vocal chords (have to keep the voice sexy), and Joe… well, I’m not actually sure what Joe was up to. (Joe? Care to comment?)

Even though we’re calling it downtime, none of us really could help but work on C4 Atlanta stuff on our own which means we’ve spent much of the past week getting back into sync.

And as we’ve now gotten back in sync, we want to update everyone on were we are at in getting this organization off the ground!

Legalese

As of July 6, C4 Atlanta has been registered as a Domestic Nonprofit Corporation operating in the State of Georgia. Hooray!

Joe has point on drafting up our bylaws document which we will need in order to take the next step of working with a lawyer from GLA to get our 501(c)3 status set up.

Financial Planning

Following the business model exercises we did last month, we’ve really pared down our programatic focus to a handful of initial services and initiatives. This also means that we’re finally beginning to get a strong picture of what our financial needs will be as we begin to put them into motion.

Jessyca is currently working on a fundraising plan which we’ll be putting into action in August and September.

Organization

As we’ve been conducting our ‘ecological scan,’ we’ve been having constant discussions regarding our vision for building an action-oriented network around C4 Atlanta. This includes defining the roles for everything from our Board of Directors and advisors, to volunteers within our Task Force structure and our ecosystem of partners. This coming week we will be putting the finishing touches on our plans for Board and Task Force development, and start growing our team beyond the core Action Team of Jessyca, Joe and I!

Our vision is not only to create a networked nonprofit, but to cultivate a network of networked nonprofits!  (If you’re curious as to what a ‘networked nonprofit’ is, check out this post on Beth Kanter’s blog. She literally co-wrote the book!) We’ll be talking more about networked nonprofits in the future.

Community

In June we had a number of ‘Happy Hours’ at Mary Mac’s Cafe so that anyone who wanted to join us and find out what we’re working on could get in on the action. And while we organized them via Facebook, it hadn’t occurred to us to blog about them.. Whoops! We promise to get better at that in the future.

Same with community events! There’s so much grassroots stuff going on around arts and culture in Atlanta that we’re beginning to see a larger narrative forming. We are excited to have been invited to participate in Gather Atlanta at the end of the month which we’re really anticipating will further this narrative through connections that are made. We’ll also be blogging more about Gather Atlanta leading up to and after the event.

Communications

We’ve been receiving some feedback that our website is rather vague with regard to our mission, plans and services we aim to provide. Frankly it’s been bugging us too, and we’ve been eagerly waiting for a viable time to work on updating our web content for the first time since we put the site up nearly two months ago.

Our understanding of what C4 Atlanta needs to be have evolved quite a bit since then and we’re ready to begin communicating that understanding. So in addition to populating our website with all new content, we are finally going to get a mailing list up and running!

Stay tuned for that in the coming week.

Audience 2.0: How Technology Influences Arts Participation

Jul 022010
 

The National Endowment for the Arts just published this report. We haven’t had a chance to read through all of it yet, but so far it seems to indicate that many of our hunches about the relationship between social media and participation in the arts are spot on!

From the SocialTimes Blog:

“The report has an abundance of statistics that indicate that technology improves the chances that users will engage with the arts. 59 percent of technology users are likely to attend live arts events such as musicals, art galleries, ballet and opera compared to 21 percent of non-technology users. On average, technology users attend six live events per year, while their non-technology counterparts only attend an average of three. The NEA believes that these findings indicate that arts engagement is enhanced, rather than decreased, as people use modern technology.”

I’ve embedded a copy below. Definitely give it a read! This document is likely to guide the national discussion about arts marketing, audience development, community participation, and patronage for years to come.

Audience 2.0: How Technology Influences Arts Participation

For a more interactive version, check out the multi-media version here: http://www.arts.gov/research/new-media-report/index.html#

Captain Lyre Calliope: An Introduction

Jul 022010
 

I sat down to write this blog post and decided to first see what had been written so far… and would you believe it, I haven’t written a single post on this blog yet! I’m sure you all have questions regarding who this mysterious third person behind C4 Atlanta is, and so I believe introductions are in order!

My background is a bit of a mixed bag. I’ve dabbled in professional futurism, explored the game industry, and done some social media consulting here and there for both non-profit and for-profit organizations. I’ve explored the worlds of politics and academia, and to top it off I’m a huge technology, business, cognitive science, design, economics, cell biology, social sciences, marketing, network theory, and social change geek. Among other things.

Most of all, I’m always looking for common narrative strands tthat connect the awesome things I’m continually finding in my explorations with people who want to create even more awesomeness!

This is how I ended up working with Jessyca and Joe. At first my plan was to do some pro-bono consulting to help them figure out their next steps in getting a business off the ground.. but when I started to see potential for a high ROA (Return on Awesome), I knew that I had to join them!

Amongst my numerous passions, I see the arts as one of the most important ingredients in making the world a better place (and even more awesome!) In my opinion, it is through the process of artistry that we best express our humanity and perpetually create and recreate ourselves. It is through the act of personal creation that things like personal empowerment, community empowerment, deliberative process, better paths through the present into the future, and happiness become possible.

I define artistry is the process of continually creating both the environment and the self. Without it, stagnation is experienced both individually and societally.

And so I’ve embarked on this journey with Joe and Jessyca to see what we can contribute to the zeitgeist in the great work of uplifting society.

Unlike my new partners however, I’m brand new to Atlanta’s arts community so I’m still learning my way around. Moving forwards, I will be blogging about my experiences and impressions as we continue to meet people, develop our services, and establish C4 Atlanta’s role within the community. I’ll also likely blog about some of the more philosophical ideas regarding the role of artistry in the 21st century that inspire our efforts.

One of my favorite things in the world is talking to people, so don’t hesitate to comment on my posts, tweets, or even contact me via email asking me to tea! I try and make myself as available as possible. (No, seriously. My private number is 573-427-7463. Call me if you’d like to make a bold introduction!)

And if you’re wondering what this whole ‘Captain’ thing is about, check out this explanation on my personal blog.

Cheers,

Captain Lyre Calliope