Create Appalachia looks to change people’s lives

“We’re excited to finally get going,” said Katie Hoffman, executive director of Create Appalachia. “We were supposed to open in 2020, but we know what happened.”

Create Appalachia opened in March. After a two-year delay courtesy COVID-19, the nonprofit organization finally implemented the beginnings of its plans to enhance opportunities for burgeoning artists to make their way in the business world.

Create Appalachia seeks to foster bridges between art and business in the region.

“Create Appalachia is the umbrella for the Centers for Art and Technology in Kingsport and Johnson City,” Hoffman said. “Our mission statement is integrating art and business for the benefit of the region.”

Founded in 2014, Create Appalachia has received a number of grants that help it carry out its mission statement. It has won grants from the Appalachian Regional Commission, Tennessee Digital Communities, SouthArts, Tennessee Arts Commission and USDA Rural Business Development.

“We serve people who are entrepreneurial but whom businesses depend on for some part of creativity,” Hoffman said.

In a sense, Create Appalachia helps people to conduct the business of art.

“We’re not an arts organization,” Hoffman said. “You’re not going to find oil painting or photography classes here.”

Instead, a photographer or perhaps a digital artist can learn ways to market his creations either in or to the business world. It’s one thing to create, and an entirely different one to locate avenues through which to make a living doing so.

To that end, Create Appalachia established its Arts@Work Series in 2016. It opens avenues to opportunities to learn and network for entrepreneurs in the region.

The series includes a range of workshops and programs from realms of digital media to industrial design taught by experts from within the Mountain Empire.

“The Arts@Work Series is free,” Hoffman said. “It’s free for everyone. We offer them every year between September and June.”

Arts@Work attendees can learn about branding and marketing, contract negotiation, aspects of legal and financial practices and so forth.

Recent classes included courses on visual merchandising, small business for muralists, and public speaking.

Forthcoming Arts@Work classes include Promoting Yourself on Social Media, which begins on Thursday, Dec. 8, in Kingsport. On Tuesday, Jan. 10, a course titled Branding Yourself as a Creative begins at the recently opened Johnson City location.

“We’re trying to build saleable skills for people,” Hoffman said. “We’re incubating people, giving them the space so they can develop those skills and move onward.”

Just outside Hoffman’s office, a conference room awaits use. There are a large elongated table and accompanying office chairs, a whiteboard, and television, too.

“Our members can book this lab,” she said. “This is a setting for nonprofits or businesses to use if they lack space.”

Nearby, a streaming media lab contains a computer as well as a whiteboard and teleprompter. People can create and stream podcasts, work on televised scripts and so on within the cozy space.

“We’re trying to fill people’s needs,” Hoffman said.

Art emancipated the building from its formerly drab existence as Kingsport’s city hall. A look just inside Creative Appalachia’s inner door reveals art painted to photography taken to movie posters advertising. Lounge areas colorful in arrays of reds and yellows and oranges nearly obliterate the grim grays that still peek around the edges.

A photograph taken by Jay Huron can be seen from the door of Hoffman’s office. A large patchwork quilt displays well on a wall of her office. Outside her door and into a lobby that prefaces a computer lab, posters from movies on which local people worked occupy wall space.

Just beyond the lobby, Nathaniel Booher, 23, of Bristol, Tennessee, worked inside a cubicle within the computer lab, his vividly colorful work displayed on a large computer monitor.

“I’m an aspiring digital media artist,” said Booher, an East Tennessee State University graduate in digital media. “This is a great space for someone who wants to work independently. This is my fourth time here. I’m kicking the tires.”

A variety of memberships, with which one may avail themselves of streaming labs, conference space, a computer lab, and print labs, are available for purchase.

Small business office space exists for rent on a floor above Create Appalachia’s entrance.

“They’re buying access,” Hoffman said. “They can use our resources. They can buy a one-day pass, a five-day pass, a 30-day pass, and a one-year membership.”

Hoffman added that computers come well-equipped with a wide array of software. Create Appalachia, she said, spent “about $50,000” on the software licenses for use on the computers. Programs, including Adobe Photoshop, can be quite expensive.

“Any fees we charge,” Hoffman said, “they get plowed right back in.”

Chris Bell, 25, of Kingsport, sat within another cubicle in Create Appalachia’s computer lab. Lights dim around him, quickly moving animation darted from his large computer monitor.

“I make online animated videos,” said Bell. “I’m a You Tuber, an online creator.”

As with Booher, Bell makes use of the lab’s quiet working environment. He digs Disney animation. Like Booher, he’s “kicking the tires” on Create Appalachia’s lab, too.

“I love the concept,” Bell said.

Create Appalachia maintains about 10,000 square feet of space inside the old city hall. Its mission statement firm and applied throughout, considerable swaths of optimism paint the environs as readily as the bright hues upon its walls.

Filmmakers can work in Create Appalachia. So can digital media creators, business owners, painters, photographers, video game designers and people from endless strings of vocations.

Create Appalachia isn’t re-creating the sky, but it is helping people to reach for it.

“We’re supposed to be setting people up in this space to launch themselves into business roles in the local economy,” Hoffman said. “We know there’s a market for it. We hope we’re strengthening Appalachia.”