Do you feel the need to be heard, share your challenges, ideas, and experiences? You are not alone! We created a space just for you. Introducing Happy Hour, our new series of informal meet-ups for creatives and art world professionals to share their work, ask for help from the hive, and get friendly feedback. We believe in the power of creative people coming together, and want to share the successes, strategies, and challenges that artists and communities have. It’s been a tough time, being in isolation has affected all of us, and the disconnection is real. This new series is a new space of personal connection. Building a connected community, one event at a time.
Carl Atiya Swanson is a creative with an MBA, a third-culture kid, and a practical optimist with a mission to facilitate and support projects that bring people together, create beauty and connections, and make the world better. As a synthesizer and a bridge-builder, Carl brings nonprofit experience as Associate Director at Springboard for the Arts, a national leader in artist resources and artist-led community development, and practical start-up and strategy experience. He is a writer, artist, and theatermaker, with published poems, plays, and essays. That collaborative, multi-disciplinary creative practice informs all his work. Carl is a 2019 Young Cultural Innovators Fellow with the Salzburg Global Seminar and has completed training on Facilitation for Racial Justice through the Interaction Institute for Social Change. He has served on the boards of the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network – Twin Cities, and Dissonance, advocating for mental health and wellness in creativity. Carl holds a BA in Studio Art from the University of Southern California and an MBA from the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business, and is based in Minneapolis, MN.
This series is inspired by connections made at the Salzburg Forum for Cultural Innovators, and is sponsored in part by the Salzburg Global Forum.
