Charlotte

Creative Exchange Call for Toolkits!

As the national program of Springboard for the Arts, Creative Exchange hosts free, practical toolkits created by artists and arts organizations along with our editorial work sharing the stories and…


5 Questions with Creative Exchange: What we have learned from our artists

Since August 2016, Creative Exchange has been asking each of our Artists With Impact a series of five questions, which appear at the end of every profile. We did this to create a thread of continuity…


Rosalia Torres-Weiner brings magic kites to children impacted by deportation

Rosalia Torres-Weiner is a multi-media artist, muralist, and activist, but she prefers to call herself an ARTivist. Through her Charlotte, North Carolina-based Red Calaca Studio, Torres-Weiner uses…


Blake Brockington

Remembering Blake Brockington, Charlotte's first openly trans homecoming king, through music

Blake Brockington was raised in Charlotte, North Carolina. He was the bandleader and a drum major, and known as a talented musician and writer as well as a caring mentor. He was also crowned…


2 Years of Creative Exchange!

It’s hard to believe, but Creative Exchange just turned 2! The platform was launched in 2014 in response to the question, “How do we support a movement around the power of local art and artists on a…


Neely Verano

LaCa Projects celebrates Latin American contemporary arts while challenging misconceptions

LaCa Projects, which stands for "Latin American Contemporary Art," was founded nearly three years ago by an Argentinean businessman, Walter Dolhare, who was born and raised in Argentina but moved to…


Jen Cole

Sharing, Building, Leading

What does the passion for local art look like on a national scale? What if the sharing economy valued sharing?          What can we do to connect people to resources that support their creative…


Alex Cruz

Charlotte Arts Center promotes inclusion, independence and growth for resident artists

The Charlotte Arts Center offers adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities a means of creative expression, integrating with the community, and even earning some income. "We look at what…


Scott Galloway

100 Words Film Festival is a democratizing film fest for the Twitter generation

In today's 140-character cultural climate, it can be quite a challenge to hold an audience's attention. The 100 Words Film Festival in Charlotte, which made its debut last November, is a film…


Over.Under.Pass.

How can public art be used to give new life to aging infrastructure and build connections?

These stories are brought to you by a partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the NEA’s Our Town program. Like so many American cities, Greensboro, North Carolina is in the midst of…


Laura Zabel

Welcome to Creative Exchange (again)

"I believe in the magic of storytelling, not only for teller but also the listener," says agrarian artist Nikiko Masumoto, who lives and works in California's Central Valley. "The possibility of…


April Denée

April Denée is the mother of BUSK!

"Busking" refers to artists performing in public places for tips. Unfortunately, "busking" all too often gets mistaken for begging, and buskers are treated by the police and public alike as…


Lisa Hoffman

The McColl Center offers urban residencies to socially-conscious artists

What is "environmental art"? Specifically, environmental art is public art that mitigates some sort of environmental issue at its location site. But in a more general sense, environmental art…


Laura Alma McCarthy

Swaraj Yoga teaches self-rule to those in recovery

The image you might conjure of a "stereotypical" yoga devotee – thin, probably affluent, likely to be white and even more likely female, any age but with a decided youthfulness – is in direct…


Annabel Manning

Annabel Manning's work as a participatory artist gives voice to the silent, suppressed, invisible

In September 2001, Annabel Manning had been living in New York for over 15 years. After 9/11, she decided to move to Pennsylvania and work on a farm. That was 12 years ago, and she speaks haltingly…