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After a varied career in promoting the arts, Philip Graulty experienced a flash of insight about a year ago when he first used AirBnB.
“I wanted to create a similar platform that could serve to crowdfund and crowdsource for emerging artists,” Graulty said. "I just saw a need in my community, and I wanted to address that."
The fruit of that is People's Pop-Up, a platform for creative leaders across the nation to organize workshops and offer laypeople opportunities to indulge an artistic jones. PPU leverages the power of technology to “transform passive consumers into active creators,” said Graulty.
[ibimage==33996==Medium==none==self==ibimage_align-right]Graulty has built People's Pop-Up on word of mouth and his diverse network of connections in the arts. "I've also started to develop a niche in offering this program to arts organizations who want to reach their community in a new way,” he said.
Right now, Graulty is handling the tech side of People's Pop-Up by himself. “My technical skills aren't that great,” he said, but his goals are simple. His aim was to create a minimum viable product and address a need in a sphere that means something to him, and he's already achieved that. "Whenever I see artists really resonate with this project, I see the need for it, why it should keep going."
[ibimage==33997==Original==none==self==ibimage_align-center]People's Pop-Up has not yet actively pursued funding, and Graulty is keeping his options open. "I have a few trajectories that I'm mapping out. One is to go the traditional, bigger way. There are a couple of accelerator programs that I'm looking to apply for. And I'm still considering getting funding from the nonprofit sector as well. I'm not sure what direction I'm going to pursue, but I'm looking to my audience and my community to decide which is the best way to go."
