Black Lives Matter Movement Inspires Camp North End to Up Their Game
 Dusk at Camp North End Calling young, Black architects (or architecture students)!
This Camp North End design competition is for you.
“From the beginning of Camp North End, we’ve been trying to … make it successful inside its boundaries, but also ensure it has a positive impact on the community. And the Black Lives Matter movement this summer challenged us to up our game, to think more deeply about how we could make choices that respond to injustice and inequity in our society.” – Damon Hemmerdinger of Camp North End
ATCO, the developer of Camp North End, is holding a competition open to young, Black architects (and aspiring architects) to design the exterior elements of a new restaurant and retail pavilion. Two Zoom information sessions – on Dec. 2 and 3 – are being held to provide more information.
 PHOTO CREDIT: Batch House The Creatives of LaCa Projects Need Your Help.
Here’s Who They Are … and How You Can.
In just 10 minutes last Thursday, Nov. 14, a flash flood destroyed years of work inside LaCa Projects alongside Little Sugar Creek. Mere moments reversed the fortunes of the gallery and the onsite baker, Batch House. From aerial photos and social media postings, it was easy to understand the damage caused. But, it’s not so easy to gauge the human cost. Artists displaying in the gallery and working in the studios behind LaCa were devastated, as well.
Yesterday, we sent you a special batch about who they are and how you can help them. If you missed it, here’s another helping.
 PHOTO CREDIT: Jess Baryla Last-Minute Opportunity!
Interact Studio & SHARE Charlotte Offering 10 Storytelling Scholarships
To raise money and build advocacy, you have to know how to tell your story. This is especially important for nonprofit organizations. But, sometimes being INSIDE an organization makes it difficult to know how to condense your story in a way those OUTSIDE can understand it. A new partnership between SHARE Charlotte and Interact Studio is aimed at addressing just that.
“Speak Up” is a half-day Zoom workshop designed to help nonprofit leaders find their voice and strengthen their story to attract sponsors, donors and a devoted base of volunteers. Participants will get feedback, course materials and a written storytelling coaching summary of their progress through the day.
Just 10 nonprofits will be selected for this free workshop (valued at $795 per participant).
 PHOTO CREDIT: @CltBlackOwned @CLTBlackOwned Speaks Up About Idea Theft
“We’ve found that part of the experience of being a BLACK creative (including media, content creators, artist, influencers, anyone who just creates …) is the idea that other people or businesses can intentionally ‘borrow’ your ideas or creations and not credit you or even acknowledge the inspiration … in a way that they would not take from non-Black creations or businesses.” – @CLTBlackOwned
We’ve featured our friends at @CLTBlackOwned several times in The Biscuit and we feel compelled to do so again. Last week, they posted on Instagram about the fact that being innovative can also make you an easy target for those who would appropriate your ideas without credit. Others stealing ideas without payment, credit or collaborating is a constant plague for creatives, especially creatives of color.
The creative team behind @CLTBlackOwned are leaders in every sense of the word. Please follow and support their work to promote Charlotte’s Black-owned buisnesses.
Charlotte Star Room’s 3 Biggest Challenges
After moving to the Queen City from New York in 2013, Charlotte Star Room founders Levin and Alexis Chaskey got to work. They didn’t wait for invitations. They did the inviting. They couldn’t help it. They were excited by what they saw and couldn’t wait to collaborate.
Over the last seven years, they’ve expanded their music and video production business, serving both the creative and corporate communities. They’ve been ahead of the curve along the way, but the “COVID-curve” has presented new challenges. And, they’re sharing three of them with us today:
CHALLENGE ONE: KEEPING THE MUSIC ALIVE
“This year, musicians have been unduly affected by the lack of live event opportunities. It’s looked a bit hopeless at times. Despite it all, we’re guiding them to use this time productively and creatively so they create new opportunities now and are ready when venues eventually reopen.”
Greg Jackson Builds Others. Who’s Built Him?
Greg Jackson, founder of Heal Charlotte, is working to provide affordable housing for families of need in Charlotte. In the course of his work, he’s found a surprising friend — an older white man named Otis Crowder. Judged solely on Otis’ appearance, Greg admits he almost overlooked him. Despite that, the two have become friends and powerful allies.
On this batch of “Who Built Me?” on The Biscuit CLT podcast, Greg shares the story of meeting Otis, becoming unlikely friends and how they’re helping others together.
The Who Built Me? series is sponsored by Foundation for the Carolinas.
 A still from Emily Sage’s newest video, “Cold Moon by the Sea” 5 Ways HUG Grantees Are Hugging Charlotte Back
Each month, Charlotte Is Creative awards Queen City creatives with $250 HUG (“Helpful Unfettered Gift”) micro-grants to propel their passions and projects forward. This month, six Charlotte creatives were awarded HUGs for projects ranging from a free mural donated to a Latinx business to a new podcast aimed at Charlotte seniors.
Nearly 250 Charlotte creatives have received HUGs since the program launched in 2017. They’re active throughout the city and always up to something interesting. Here are five notable and active projects from HUG alumni (whom we affectionately refer to as HUGgees):
- Singer/songwriter Emily Sage released a music video for her new single “Cold Moon by the Sea” this week. (Pictured above.) Watch it here.
- “Coach” William McNeely of the Do Greater Foundation is converting the bottom floor of Shiloh into the Creative Lab, a classroom and gathering space where youth from under-resourced communities can learn the technical skills to be the “next generation of impact creatives.” Watch a 60-second video about the project from Charlotte Star Room.
- Three HUGgees — Taylor Lee Nicholson, Rebecca Henderson and Kat Sanchez — are finalists for a New York Festivals’ Bowery award for an animated video they created under quarantine. Watch it here on Instagram.
- Bree Stallings was one of the architects of the new “Charlotte” mural at Camp North End to herald the We Are Hip Hop Festival, which she helped create.
- After starting his new job as director of creative engagement for Blumenthal Performing Arts, Boris “Bluz” Rogers dropped a new single, “Smile,” with collaborator ANRO. Listen on Soundcloud here.
The HUG program is sponsored by T. Reid & Company, Savvy & Company, Google Fiber, NoDa Brewing and the Knight Foundation.
It may seem like murals pop-up overnight, but they require a great deal of time, planning and patience. They also contain a great deal of secret wonder. Much of the base work artists use to establish the mural is covered up by the final product. If you’re vigilant — you can catch an artist at work. That allows you to peer into their process and see the “mural under the mural.”
This week, we popped by East Town Market to find Georgie Nakima expanding a mural she created last year in partnership with Red Hill Ventures. This expansion is funded by the City of Charlotte’s Placemaking program. If you act fast, you may just get there in time to watch her work, ask her questions (mask up, though, please) and witness her work expand from the initial spray-painted lines to her multi-colored, geometric style.
If you don’t get there in time, you will still find an incredible piece of public art AND you can swing for a treat from BW Sweets of Food Network fame. It’s just around the corner from the mural.
[TIP: The mural is just down from Compare Foods on the N. Sharon Amity Side.]
Directions: 3112 Milton Rd, Charlotte, NC 28215
Don’t go ’round hungry. If you missed the last batch of The Biscuit, don’t worry. We’ve kept it warm for you. This batch featured:
- A look at “Hands Up: 7 Playwrights, 7 Testaments,” a live, online production from Three Bone Theatre
- An introduction to actor Pat Dortch, the face you know with the name you don’t (yet)
- SHARE Charlotte is leading up to #GivingTuesdayCLT by partnering with 10 Charlotte artists
- A chat with Leonard Love, co-founder of Gymonkee
- A behind-the-scenes photo safari of “Lights” at the US National Whitewater Center
- Our new best friend, henna artist Sana Nisar AKA @henna_by_sana
- Sante, a new (and really big) face on Providence Road
Click here to dig in, y‘all.
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