Lunch with Linda

Today the CCE team met from 11-12 about the format of our creative cluster meet-ups. We decided to have snacks, several mini-talks by different speakers, and conclude with the project brainstorming session. One really exciting possibility we discussed for next week's meetup is to have Kera Carpenter, owner of Domku restaurant in DC, come in to speak and share appetizers from her restaurant, and then examine her story as a case study for creative entrepreneurship.

Following that, we met up with Linda Murray, artistic director for Solas Nua, for lunch at Busboys. We discussed the issue of space finding, then moved on to an important issue facing artists everywhere: having a unified voice. Evelyn and Linda each had horror stories of open meetings where, when the floor was opened for questions, individuals were all telling their own stories--which put the officials immediately to sleep. Linda contrasted this with one meeting where a community of artists all showed up to the meeting, but elected only one speaker as their voice to represent the goals of the group; this type of organization was much more effective at getting the point across, and is something we may be able to learn from as we further the creative economy.