This is DSCS, an infrequent yet thoughtful newsletter that collects my fieldnotes as a community strategist.
Wait, but what’s community strategy? Community strategy combines the fields of outreach, communications, creative placemaking, data analysis, and product management to solve community problems. It’s planning the building blocks and the roadmap together to forge responsive solutions for user bases, community members, and employees in the creative economy.
Okay, so how do you do it? As the Managing Director of DSCS and former Arts Outreach Lead at Kickstarter, I’ve collectively raised 4.5 million dollars for 500 artists and institutions on Kickstarter, convinced 38 companies and thousands of employees to try a Four Day Work Week, and placed over 20 Land Back billboards by Native artists and their allies across North America. I’ve published artist interviews with The Creative Independent and worked for the Whitney Museum, a Detroit letterpress, an independent design agency, and dozens of DJs—helping them craft their stories, grow their platforms, secure funding, and claim agency.
Now, I want to share these experiences with you.
From post-production thoughts on why certain tools and strategies work to the holy grail of CRMs (Streak, duh!), my goal is to convince you that community strategy is an interdisciplinary, inclusive, and insightful way to solve problems in the creative economy.
And if you want to continue this work, subscribe at a paid level to keep our tracks laid and our engine humming.