© 2024 WMRA and WEMC
WMRA : More News, Less Noise WEMC: The Valley's Home for Classical Music
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Rocktown RockIT: Looking for a Few Good Creatives

Kara Lofton

Wednesday night, July 8th, Valley artists and creative thinkers gathered in James Madison University’s makerspace to discuss how to attract and keep creative people in the Valley.  WMRA’s Kara Lofton reports.

The event was hosted by the Meetup Rocktown RockIT, which, according to its website, is a “collaborative venture between JMU and small local businesses [to help] facilitate startup success.”  Wednesday’s event was called “The Sustainable Start-Up: Finding and Maintaining the Creative Impulse” and was designed as a forum for the community to discuss how to keep, promote, and support local artists and entrepreneurs.

Aaron Kishbaugh is one of the Meetup’s organizers.

AARON KISHBAUGH: Having a Meetup where we talk about arts and the arts community in Harrisonburg and in the Valley in general is important because it’s really the creatives that drive great startup success in any place. So having a discussion where we talk about what’s missing or what’s really great about the Valley enables us to figure out ways to either attract more people to the area or support the people who are here. A lot of what I heard tonight was: needing more institutional support for artists, needing a better large gallery spaces or large spaces for creative people to work together.

The ideas generated at Rocktown IT’s meetings will eventually be developed into a 12-week tech incubator class that will run through the fall. The hope is that the class will connect idea-people with experts who know how to make great ideas become reality.

Kara Lofton is a photojournalist based in Harrisonburg, VA. She is a 2014 graduate of Eastern Mennonite University and has been published by EMU, Sojourners Magazine, and The Mennonite. Her reporting for WMRA is her radio debut.