If you have ever attended CultureCon, you know the magic that happens when creatives come together for a weekend of inspiration, networking, and community. But what happens after the festival ends? Your creative career and lifestyle do not stop, so why should the support system?
Enter CultureCon Collective.
In an exclusive announcement with Essence, the team behind the ultimate creative homecoming revealed that they are expanding their ecosystem with a brand-new, year-round platform. CultureCon Collective is designed to be an ongoing home for creative professionals, expanding year-round access to funding, education, and community for creatives nationwide.
By pulling all these resources to one table, the Collective aims to support creatives long after the festival weekend is over.
The launch of the Collective is a direct result of the festival’s massive growth. After bringing in 12,000 attendees last year, founder Imani Ellis shared that the community was constantly asking for more year-round connection.
“I think so much of CultureCon’s growth has been in response to what our community’s asking for,” Ellis explained to Essence. “Our community was saying, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could have the CultureCon community all year round? Wouldn’t it be great if we could come together at the end of the year, but we had already seen each other?'”
The new Collective will take the three main pillars of CultureCon, community, education, and culture, and give them dedicated, year-round resources. This includes the launch of the CultureCon Café, an eight-city traveling pop-up designed to foster intimate, 200-person meetups, and the CultureCon Foundation, which will formalize the brand’s philanthropic efforts by offering grants and free workshops.
Also launching this summer is the Creative Business School. Designed to help creatives see themselves as CEOs and founders, the program will launch as a video capsule course tackling technical topics like trademarks, LLCs, and hiring.
“We want to empower creatives and content creators and influencers to think of themselves as the next generation of startups… We need to make sure that it’s actually a sound business,” Ellis shared.
To accommodate creatives at different stages of their journeys, CultureCon Collective will operate on a specialized pass system. Because your career is constantly evolving, the platform will offer three-tiered passes to meet you exactly where you are, every step of the way.
While the new Collective is a massive step forward for the brand, fans of the traditional festival have nothing to worry about. The flagship CultureCon event is still happening. The annual creative homecoming is officially set for October 3 and 4 in Brooklyn, New York.
According to Ellis, the addition of year-round programming will actually make the flagship festival even better. Instead of cramming a year’s worth of networking and education into two days, the festival will now serve to amplify the “little snacks” the community has been engaging with all year.
“I think we’ve been putting a lot of pressure on two days. It’s a lot of pressure to ask people to go to 40 panels in two days and then see all the activations and then meet 12,000 people,” Ellis explained. “Our hope is that if you participate in creative business school in the summer, that by the time you come to CultureCon in the fall, you’re ready to start at level 2.0. And so I think this is going to really set our community up for success so that they understand what to anticipate when we get to the big festival.”
Doors to the CultureCon Collective, along with early bird tickets for the Brooklyn festival, officially go on sale this Thursday, April 16.
For those who want to jump the line, CultureCon is currently inviting users to comment the word “COLLECTIVE” on their Instagram announcement to join the waitlist. Keep in mind that invitations are being sent out on a first-come, first-served basis, so you will want to act fast.
Photo Credit: CultureCon Website
