Networking events are weird.
You look up from your phone, your cheeks full of cheese cubes. A man in a turtleneck sweater and spectacles shifts from foot to foot in front of you. He doesn’t know what to ask you. He doesn’t want to make small talk. You had been playing Angry Birds.
“So what do you do?” he finally asks.
Your mouth is full of dairy.
Networking is a necessary component to being any sort of artist (and we firmly believe that creating VR environments of any kind is an art), and collaboration is a great way to grow, but how can we network in a more effective way in 2019?
Banging Rocks already builds never-before-assembled teams to create new VR experiences, but the inspiration of doing so got us thinking. There are so many kinds of artists in our world, a world that desperately needs human connection and art right now (boy, does it), but how do you connect and network different kinds of artists who might otherwise never meet? Fostering connection is one of our core values, and not just for ourselves.
It’s one thing to create a networking event for, say, writers, OR filmmakers, OR digital artists, OR musicians… but what would a networking event open to ANY artist look like?
Converge was born out of a desire to be able to connect different kinds of artists in a new and exciting way.
The premise – take groups of random artists ranging from writers to painters to web designers, put them in a room, and give them a challenge – create a new piece of art the world has never seen, and do it in a pre-determined amount of time ranging from eight hours to 72 hours.
After the time is up, different groups and the public can peruse the various projects, meet the people who created the various components, and exchange information, feedback ideas. Ideally, the group of brand-new collaborators might have started forming an idea or work that they’ll want to run with and continue long after the Converge event is over.
There’ll be more to it, with some fun challenges and motivators, but for now that’s a little tease of what’s up our collective sleeves; bringing people together to make art that they never could have conceived of by themselves.
For more information of Converge, watch https://bangingrocks.ca/ and this blog space or contact daniel@bangingrocks.ca. Exciting things are afoot!