Silver City, NM- After donating a $10,000 grant, the Power Company of New Mexico (PNM) begin their powerful and innovative sets of Emerging Technologies and Creative Commerce lectures centered to the artistic entrepreneurs of Silver City. PNM plan to develop people to see the potential on new creative economies, and what ever way to do that with the help of the non-profit Santa-Fe organization, Creative Startups.
Chair for the Fine Arts Department, Michael Metcalf started off the presentation by addressing the many art students in the room, and introduced the many questions artists and dreamers seem to face: “How to dream and how to make that dream happen into reality and most importantly where does that money come in?” The podium was then focused on Tim Castillo, an associate professor of architecture at the University of New Mexico. Castillo spoke about the possibility of having a permanent installation of The Makers Lab, a place where people would be able to use tools such as a laser printing and culinary tools to further expand and build their learning of their craft in the old Silver City Museum Annex with he help of PNM and The Silver City Design Field School.
The stage then welcomed Dr. Alice Loy, who is co-founders and CEO of the Creative Startups organization. Creative Startups is a “pre-accelerator program” and focuses on building from the idea of creative entrepreneurs and making it marketable to the public. Dr. Loy addresses that the U.S. is a tech driven creative economy and there is an expected art oriented job growth by 22% on 2022. Creative Startups is also known for bringing their alumni success and recognition, such as Sydney Alfonso who created Etkie, a Native American centered jewelry and art business and Vince Kadlubek who founded the iconic Meow Wolf, an interactive art installation. The non-profit organization is also planning on holding a collaboration with New Mexican libraries in order to make them into resource centers for entrepreneurs. They wish to support with books and materials to further education in libraries.
Finally, Dr. Loy closed off with a QnA and a memorable quote, “If you’re an entrepreneur and you’ve gotten laughed at, they just don’t get it, you haven’t been talking to the right people.” After the presentation was over, the audience was welcomed to interact with the different art gadgets WNMU and UNM had on display, ranging from instruments to 3D printers.
More information on Creative Startups can be found at http://www.creativestartups.org/ and The Silver City Design Field School (Plata Studio) can be found at http://findingrural.wixsite.com/silvercity1.
