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Matt Olin
So if you’re a creative of any kind whether you’re a musician, a poet, a dancer, an actor, a visual artist – you’ll want to stay tuned.
Matt who we have in today is one of the partners, along with Tim Miner, in this great thing called Charlotte Is Creative, and they bring creatives together. They bring them in a community and they have events where they not only bring creatives together but they bring them together over a coffee over a food and you know even bourbon so they they’re involved in helping artists get funded and they they even have a rock -pop soul variety band that’s an extension of what they do
Welcome Matt Olin.
Thank you so much Terry, glad to be here.
Well you know I found something interesting about you even though I’ve known you a little while now I did not know that you had a theater background. That kind of surprised me no even you’re very theatrical anybody’s been to any one of your events very theatrical tell tell me more about your theater background.
I grew up doing theater as a kid. I was a theater rat, right? Here in Charlotte, I went to the Children’s Theater of Charlotte as a kid. I feel like that’s where my creative self kind of cracked open in those creaky old halls back when it was on Morehead Street. I know we’re talking hyper-local Charlotte here, but that was my love as a kid. And so when I went to college, I realized I thought I was a good actor, but actually, these are good actors.
I wanted to go behind the scenes and assemble teams around a musical or a play and really bring theatrical ideas to life. And so that led to grad school at Columbia up in New York, which led to a Broadway career. So I spent the first half of my career developing and producing big budget musicals and plays for Broadway, off -Broadway, national tours, regional theater.
I would put up shows in hotel rooms. rooms and warehouses, really anywhere I could put a show on, that was my calling, and so that’s the first half of my career.
It was good training for what you do now. Something I was reading about Charlotte after I moved here became such a fan of the city, such a great city when it comes to the arts, but Charlotte in the earlier days was one of the four acting capitals of the United States, it’s like when it came to plays, we had the actors here, they trained here and we had families you know like the Booth family that was you know very prominent at that time in acting and so you know it’s a great training ground and all the schools that we have you know like the art schools that are here in town so many of them I don’t want to you know name them and leave somebody else but we have actors here that have dated back like the 40s that actually came from Charlotte. You know people that have roads named after them and you never knew you know that they were actor in Hollywood at the time or they played on some TV shows that you loved and they actually came from here. So that’s a great place to start.
It’s incredible. There’s something in the water here right that just breeds amazing creative people including theatrical and other actors. So you’re right like people that have been in the silent era and beyond. Even today there are folks that grew up here that are in huge blockbuster movies.
Broadway plays.
Broadway plays, successful TV shows. Northwest School of the Arts is cranking out amazing artists, including Renee Rapp, who is the lead in the Mean Girls musical movie right now, just on and on. So it just goes to show you that the creative well runs very deep here in Charlotte.
Yeah, and in the– you know the theaters are involved with the schools. They have the Blumey Awards. I think it’s how you pronounce it, right?
Yes, Blumey Awards, yeah.
And they you know not only just Northwestern but they’re involved in a lot of schools bringing masterclasses to them which is really cool. So let’s get to this thing with you and your partner Tim Minor who’s such a funny incredible guy he is. How did this force and it’s definitely a force known as Charlotte is Creative, how did that come about?
Well, about eight years ago, Tim and I had rounded into our forties and we were feeling called to do something that contributed to our community, this city that we called home. And what we wanted to do was gather creative people together and just see what sort of magic would be unleashed when creative people came together for really no other reason than to celebrate each other, to shine a light on each other, to see if there are ways that we can collaborate with each other. So take that transactional piece out of it and just be about creating connective tissue with each other. And so that was the origin story. We started this thing called Creative Mornings Charlotte. It’s one chapter of a global Community of chapters about 200 chapters strong. We just happened to run the Charlotte chapter.
And I try never to miss that one
Well it is a great way to start your morning
I have to say you know working with musicians for instance any musician that’s within the Charlotte region should make this a priority and I’ll go into that a little bit later but it is the thing that they need to be at when it comes to networking I feel in Charlotte.
I, you know, I love it. It’s we like to say come see old friends and make new friends right so it is a networking experience but it doesn’t feel networky at all. You’re just there celebrating the creative spirit of Charlotte. If you’re a musician, let’s say, you’re either in the audience cheering folks on or you’re on the stage actually performing. It’s a morning party, a celebration of creativity.
And businesses can give a pitch. You know, I’ve done a pitch actually for this network on there, and they can give it a, what do you call it, the 49 second pitch?
49 second pitches, yeah, that’s exactly right.
That’s one of the great things that I’ve seen in this town when it comes to networking.
Well, we learned that a long time ago that 30 seconds isn’t long enough to pitch something, but 60 seconds is too long. So when UNC Charlotte, you know, the fighting 49ers came on board. We said, you know what? 49 -second pitches. You got 49 seconds to tell us about whatever you want to share with us. You know, your creative project, your business, whatever it is, people love it. It’s become a tradition.
And you know, just doing that 49 -second pitch, I just want to say this about it. I did the first one and after that I got messages on LinkedIn. I got people walking up to me after the event. I got messages on Facebook. I was even on a Zoom call with somebody who said, “Hey, I saw you doing the 49 second pitch at Creative Morning.” So it carries weight.
The slots fill up pretty quickly. We’re actually filling up our 49 second pitch slots like a month or two out at this point. But yeah, it’s because I think people have realized that that one program of ours, Creative Mornings, and that’s one of 18 programs that Charlotte Is Creative is doing right now.
But that program has become, it’s gotten a reputation as being sort of a room of movers and shakers and doers and people that, if you can get up in front of that crowd and share something, it’s gonna create some ripples. And so we’re really grateful for that reputation.
Well, I definitely wanna talk more about Creative Mornings and we’ll get to that. But first, I wanna talk to you about two things. things that I see very important with Charlotte is Creative The first one is how you guys facilitate funding and I think Artists need to know more about that whether the musicians like say visual artists poets, whatever it is. Can you elaborate on that because I know that that’s one of the things that you guys do with Charlotte is Creative?
Absolutely, you know back when the energy around Creative Mornings was really really swirling, we also, it turned into a platform for us to uncover a lot of the gaps that were happening in the creative community. And something that became very clear very quickly was that emerging creatives, people that were really just getting started with their creative careers, that they weren’t able to access available funding in a way that maybe more established creatives were able to access from other grant -making entities. So we said, you know what, no one’s doing micro -granting in the creative community here. So let’s do that. Let’s do microgranting. Let’s give away grants in the amount of $250 or maybe upwards of $1,000 to really just to remove a barrier from a creative project, to remove one obstacle from a creative idea becoming reality. And a lot of people said, you know, $250 is not going to do anything. But it turns out it’s not true. Like we are able to take the funding that we get from our generous sponsors, corporate and otherwise, and disseminate them, spread it out far and wide and create as many creative fires, start as many creative sparks and fires in Charlotte as possible.
Some of them are going to go out, but some of them are going to flare up. And what we’re learning is that people say,
Yea, Irasol Gonzalez, her career is thriving right now and she will be the first to tell you that that $250 Hug Grant was the very first dollar that’s anyone ever gave her for a creative project So it’s in many ways not even so much about the money as it is about that pat on the back and that vote of confidence to say we believe in you that crazy creative idea that you have isn’t so crazy after all and so we’re gonna give you a little money to nudge you forward. It’s their love bombs of cash It’s nudge money
My wife, you know Kurma, she won Artist of the Year at Queen City Awards. She tells everybody that the Hug Grant is how she did her book, got to get her book out you know and you know, see what that did and of course she’s parlayed that into speaking engagements and everything else so I’m believer in that.
Yeah.
Another thing is, and this is huge, is something that I’m so happy that somebody in Charlotte is a champion of, which is community and social capital. Which it flows through everything you do when it comes to the community part, for sure. Social capital is such an overlooked thing, I think, by artists that that’s how you thrive. You go to a networking event, you stay in touch with these people. They have things that they do, whether they’re visual artists, like I said, or they’re a musician, or they’re a poet, or they’re a camera person, you know, or some of them are DPs, you know, or an editor. And these people get together, they collaborate, their things end up in galleries and museums and murals on, you know, on walls and all the things that makes the city great. And of course it goes beyond the city. Those things have been seen and moved. and TV shows and things like that. But it’s because these people collaborated.
And I think a lot of times, artists can tend to work without when they don’t have knowledge of the social capital aspect. They can tend to work in silos. And you’re so much bigger when you bring other creativity in it. You have a gift that the world needs to see. And when you have, you know, what is it? J. Paul Getty said something like, “I’d rather have 1 % of 100 people’s efforts than 100 % of my own.” Is that the concept?
Yes.
I mean, that brings it into reality. How do you guys facilitate that?
Well, first of all, we commissioned a study from UNC Charlotte’s Urban Institute a couple years ago that was about the business realities of Charlotte and Mecklenburg’s creative community. And one of the really surprising revelations from that study was that for those that said they were extremely satisfied or satisfied as a creative in Charlotte Mecklenburg, they pointed to their feeling of connection as the element that cut through, right? That that was the real reason, regardless of how much they were earning, that if they felt supported by and connected to their fellow creatives and to the community around them, that they felt like they had a satisfactory, a very satisfying creative career experience in Charlotte The reverse is also true. Those that said that they were unsatisfied pointed to the fact that they felt disconnected. And so it was just a really important learning that the more connected we feel as creators in Charlotte,
the more satisfied we are, the more supported we’re going to feel and the more successful. we’re gonna be. So every program that we do, there is an element of social capital exchange involved in it. Creative Mornings, certainly. Yes, it’s more of a party atmosphere, but there is this exchange of social capital happening. A program like Charlotte Reciprocity Circles is like laser focused on–
That’s a newer thing.
It’s a newer thing. We’ve only done three of them so far, but essentially we are rolling up our sleeves and saying, “Okay, we’re looking for efficiencies in exchanging social capital. So if I sit in a circle of 15 or 20 people and I have an opportunity to say “Terry, this is what I’m doing in the world and I have one specific need that I need help with right now” So I’m asking you for what I need and then everyone else in the circle gets a chance to say,
“You know what? I know that person.”
“I can connect you to that resource.”
“I know the perfect venue for you.”
Whatever it is. So we’re exchanging social capital in a way that lifts all the boats And so, yeah, you’re right. This learning, the new muscle memory of asking for what we need, offering what we have, is such a key part of building social capital, and that is how we thrive and sustain ourselves as creatives.
And it eliminates the myth of scarcity mentality, that you have to, you know, if you’re, if somebody else is doing something, it’s taking away from what you’re doing, and it’s actually the opposite.
Oh, it flips it on its head.
In the music industry, I’ve seen these guys grow, like there’ll be three artists that have collaborated, and they grow about the same time. Yeah. And because you’re collaborating on, you know, email lists and fan bases and talent.
Yeah.
And what are your programs that you do that kind of cultivate that?
Yeah, well, certainly Charlotte Reciprocity Circles, absolutely. We love programs like The Drop. The Drop is a quarterly program where we commission a group of artists to, normally it’s artists of color, artists from underserved or under -invested communities, to create a mural, a large mural, 8×12 mural. It hangs for three months in a brewery here called Divine Barrel Brewery, and then it becomes the label of a beer can that gets distributed across North and South Carolina. So it’s this interesting experiment in compensation for artists and innovative exposure for artists. And there’s nothing quite like it happening. But the reason it’s happening is because we are embracing collaboration around this idea. We’re collaborating with the small business community. We’re collaborating with community partners to help us source the artists. We’re collaborating with the artists themselves. So to your point, it’s just a case study in this idea that cliche as it sounds, we are stronger together. We all support each other. We rise up if we embrace this idea of abundance mentality versus scarcity mentality and helping each other and collaborating with each other versus saying I’m gonna go it alone.
Right.
Yeah. So that’s a perfect example. I think is the drop.
Before moving to the next thing I know it started with you and Tim but now your crew has grown. I’d like you to give a shout out for your crew.
Oh my gosh well we are a small but mighty team of five that are doing the work of 50.
Yeah, you do more for creatives than anybody knows, so I don’t even know how you get it done.
Yeah, so shout out, of course, Tim Miner, my partner, but also Makayla Binter, who’s an incredible artist, Davidson Grad, and we call her our creative catalyst. I mean, she is out there in the community representing us and other artists in such powerful ways. Melissa Dorsch, who’s like a black belt project manager and has been with us for years, and then Setu Raval, who is our program manager for the Creative Entrepreneurs Initiative, this team, we feel so lucky that we’re able to do this work with this team. We need a bigger team. All five of us will tell you, we’re the first to tell you, we need more people.
You’re getting there.
But we’re getting there. But yeah, the Charlotte is Creative team, so grateful for them, would never be able to bring these ideas to reality without
I know let’s let’s go ahead and talk about Charlotte is Creative because like the other programs you’re talking about and we know we we talked about community we talked about social capital But something that I’m big into as well is providing artists creatives in general with knowledge because they they they know about their art But a lot of times they don’t know how to market their art. They don’t know programs that are available. They don’t know the technology to get their art out there. And you guys, you know, whether it’s Creative Mornings or your other programs that we’ve spoken about here, you provide knowledge, you know, through those programs. You have such great speakers. When I tell people about the speakers you have for Creative Mornings, they’re kind of mind blown about that. So, can you tell me? about a little bit more about Creative Mornings and just quickly about the structure of it and how that helps the knowledge?
Yeah, absolutely. I think that Creative Mornings is a great platform for sharing knowledge and new perspectives with our community, but also we have this sort of cornerstone program that’s called the Creative Entrepreneurs Initiative, CEI for short. And that really has become the sort of, I guess the touchstone program for us in this. idea of knowledge and training. We are huge advocates of this idea that artists and creatives are small businesses. They are entrepreneurs.
They have opportunities to be that today that they didn’t have a while ago.
That is a new mindset for both our community to think of that sector of our economy as contributors to the economy, as small businesses, but also in many cases for artists and creatives to think of themselves. as small businesses and to arm themselves with the knowledge and the training they need to actually create a strong foundation, financial, legal, or otherwise, so that they can actually have a thriving, successful, sustainable, creative career. So our Creative Entrepreneurs Initiative does just this. It brings subject matter experts in to train the creative community on all of these skills that they need to think about and to approach their creative career, thinking like a small business owner, thinking like an entrepreneur. And so there are two cohorts a year that we do. There’s also free community conversations that we do. We have this quarterly thing called the Power Panel that brings together a series of an array of experts around a particular topic. So we’re always experimenting with ways to sort of inject that knowledge and that training into the creative community and it’s we believe in radical access everything is free. We don’t charge a dime for any of it. Thanks to our you know Sponsors to our sponsors and to Mecklenburg County and to the other people that support the work we’re doing .
Yeah, and for those who have not been Creative Mornings is one of the ways that they thank their sponsors. It’s worth going to Creative Mornings just for this because Matt and Tim seeing whatever song it is at that time with all the sponsors names in it and it’s, it’s a pretty remarkable experience that you have to see to believe. And you guys are not afraid to tackle any song.
Well, you know, first of all, we’re not great singers, so let’s get that out of the way.
I think they’re better than they think, but they tackle some hard songs.
We do, we try, we do, and it has become this very infamous strange tradition where people want to hear us sing our thanks to our sponsors and we try think a few years ago we tried skipping that once and people got mad at us so every month that’s how we thank our sponsors as we sing a song to them and it’s you know it’s a well -known song we just changed the lyrics and it’s a lot of fun and I think it’s emblematic of the kind of joy and fun and creativity that we try to bring to all of our events throughout each month.
Well now we’re going into the the thing that I get to be a part part of sometimes when I’m available and that is this this unique concept that I heard of. When I first heard of it, I thought no, that’s never gonna work. So I showed up and I was amazed at how this put together, but you have a project called OneBand.
Mm -hmm,
So let’s talk more about OneBand, what is the concept behind OneBand?
Yeah Well, first of all if Creative Mornings is a monthly party celebrating creativity and if Charlotte Reciprocity Circles is, let’s roll up our sleeves and get actually serious and get to work about exchanging social capital, somewhere in the middle is a program like OneBand, which is really meant to fan the creative flame that’s inside all of us, to sort of create an opportunity to meet new collaborators and just to remind ourselves that we are creative beings, even if we work our full days at one of the big banks or whatever. We have creative and energy inside of us. And life is better when we let it out. So, one band is very simple. You know, because you’ve been a part of it, which is so cool, right? Every other month, we post a short set list of songs. Anyone that wants to play those songs live…
Anyone.
Anyone.
That’s the great part of it. …can sign up. Right. So, any skill level. You can be brand new. You can be an expert savant, right? You can be someone who hasn’t played in 20 years. You’ve got to dust your… equipment off. Doesn’t matter any any instrument,
right from singer to saxophonist to Keyboardist to drummer to viola player to ukulele. I mean you name it and we have one rehearsal and one performance And then we disband so essentially as you’ve experienced we usually have somewhere between 25 and 30 people.
Oh, you have two of every instrument plus a horn section. Who gets to sing with a band like that? I mean that that’s a dream.
It’s it’s a it’s a ton of fun And we spend three hours as getting as comfortable as we can with these three songs Excuse me these five songs and then a couple nights later We go a perform it in front of a crowd of people that are screaming for us, honestly just to get through the songs and because the crowd knows this is a musical tightrope walk that we’re that we’re walking here So, I don’t know there’s something really electrifying just about that. It is a leap of faith tightrope walk, I guess. A sonic social experiment.
And here’s how it relates to, or probably is into connection. What is the slogan that you guys use for this? That every singer and every instrumentalist knows.
We drive this home really hard, right? The mantra of one band is connection, not perfection. And it sort of gets to the heart of why I came up with the idea in the first place. Terry, I don’t know about you, but I have a real raging perfectionist inside of me. I want everything to be perfect. If you see me before a Creative Mornings event, you’ll see me lining chairs up like with a ruler, because I want the chairs to be perfectly straight. So I thought, you know what, I got to tame this part of me, because it’s not really that healthy. So I created a program. program called OneBand that would be absolutely impossible to get perfect. How can you get 30 people in a room for three hours to learn five songs and then perform it in front of a crowd and it be perfect? It will never happen. And so I sort of, I don’t know, painted myself into a corner on purpose to kind of teach my inner perfectionist that it’s actually okay. It’s actually okay for something not to be perfect. It’s actually great. great for you to get in front of a crowd and mess up.
You get started.
Yeah. Because you get started.
Yeah, and that thing right there, one of the things that I talk about a lot is I always say your first thing will not be a masterpiece, but without your first thing, you’ll never have a masterpiece. And creativity, everybody has creativity. Opportunities don’t just fall in your lap, they’re created. And so that creativity in you has to be sparked. And so something has to spark. and this is why this is a great thing because you take any skill level Yeah, you encourage the connection not perfection. They get up there and they end up giving their best and I see these people show up I thought this will be a train wreck the first time I was a part of it and it wasn’t and it was a packed crowd and Everybody loved it and was one of the best things I had been involved in. and it’s because people do you know give their all the audience Feels that the genuineness of that. Because they are connecting, but they’re getting over that perfection thing, just like you’re talking about. And that’s so important in a creative community, just to get started. Put that thing out there, people want to see you grow, they don’t want to see the perfect thing that we’ve always pushed in the music industry, they want to see you grow. That’s why all these talent shows do so well, because they see how they improve. I applaud this that you’re doing.
Well, look what’s happening now. You have these little spin -off musical projects that are spinning out of OneBand, and people have come up to me and saying, “Thank you for doing this, “because I forgot how much I loved “creating music with other people.” So now we are, true to our name, Charlotte is Creative. We are making Charlotte more creative, one person at a time, because we’re reminding them that they love playing music in this particular example. So we just love it. It’s a very fulfilling experience. to be a part of for sure.
Well, I have to say, as someone that lives in Charlotte, I greatly appreciate what you guys do. You know, it’s, it’s, this city is going to grow, you know, as a center for the arts. And it’s because of organizations like yours. And your organization is so key. And, you know, thank you for sitting down with me today and giving me your time.
Terry, thank you for inviting me. And yes, the last thing I want to say is to your point, like our vision as a nonprofit is that Charlotte becomes the most welcoming and supportive community for artists and creative entrepreneurs in America and we want that reputation to proliferate from coast to coast.
I believe it’s gonna happen.
And we’re gonna get there. It’s gonna take time, but we just keep doing it. Folks like you doing what you’re doing, showing up and being a part of one band and showing up to Creative Mornings and allowing me to have this conversation with you. It’s one day at a time, but we’re gonna get there.
Well, thank you very much. And you’ve been listening to Local Music Somewhere. Our guest, Matt Olin, I should say the incredible Matt Olin, and right here on rbeatz.com. So see you next time. Thanks a lot.
Thank you, Terry.