The Columbus Festival Scene

Tim Fulton 0:13Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Confluence Cast presented by Columbus Underground. We are a weekly Columbus-centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. This week, I sat down with festival and community organizer Cassie Young. We discussed the current state of affairs in the local festival scene, how people can discover what's going on in Columbus, the ins and outs of creating a festival, the importance of accessibility in the community, and filling the gap that was left by Independence Day. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Also, the Confluence Cast is on Patreon. Find out how to support this podcast on our website, theconfluencecast.com, or at patreon.com/confluence. The Confluence Cast is brought to you this week by the Upper Arlington Labor Day Arts Festival, a day of creativity and entertainment for all to enjoy. Join them September 2nd at Northam Park as they celebrate their 53rd year. Visit upperarlingtonoh.gov for more. Enjoy the interview. Sitting down here with Cassie Young talking about festivals today. She is one of the founders of Cloud City 614, also one of the co-founders of Matter News. Cassie, how are you?

Cassie Young 1:43I am great. Thank you for having me today.

Tim Fulton 1:45Absolutely. Absolutely. So we're talking about festivals in general in Columbus. Normally in the past, we've done sort of a here's what's coming up, and I think today is a lot more going to be a state of affairs-

Cassie Young 1:59Mm-hmm

Tim Fulton 1:59... of what's going on in the festival scene in Columbus. Let's get started with tell us about Cloud City. Uh, it's coming up on September 7th at 400 West Rich. What can people expect there?

Cassie Young 2:11A lot. So we are a multimedia performance arts festival. Um, you're gonna see a lot more performances than you might see at a typical arts festival, and you'll also see a lot more diversity of mediums and especially people. So, um, we include music, film, fashion, gaming, mindfulness. Uh, Matter News will be there with some, um, investigative reporter, uh, kinda thing you can go on. And then, um, we also have podcasting.

Tim Fulton 2:45Okay.

Cassie Young 2:46I think I hit most of the elements.

Tim Fulton 2:47You hit most of-

Cassie Young 2:47Oh, and skateboarding. Skateboarding, sorry. We have so many things that it's hard to remember.

Tim Fulton 2:51The only other things I wrote down were, I don't know if you said film, but I don't think you said dance, and I don't think you said comedy.

Cassie Young 2:57Yes, yes.

Tim Fulton 2:58So I think you've got-

Cassie Young 2:59You got the ones I missed

Tim Fulton 2:59... I mean-

Cassie Young 2:59Yes

Tim Fulton 3:00... of the list of 15, you hit, you know-

Cassie Young 3:02Yeah.

Tim Fulton 3:02... 80% of them.

Cassie Young 3:03Yes.

Tim Fulton 3:03You did pretty good.

Cassie Young 3:04Yes.

Tim Fulton 3:05Is it one of those atmospheres where you walk in and there's sort of like different things happening around every corner?

Cassie Young 3:11Yes. Mm-hmm.

Tim Fulton 3:11It's a ticketed event?

Cassie Young 3:12Yes.

Tim Fulton 3:13Or... Okay.

Cassie Young 3:13So it is 18 plus. Uh, this is the first time we've done this event other than the fact that we did a pre-event that was a mini shrunken down version of this that had film, mindfulness, uh, experience, uh, music, and photography-

Tim Fulton 3:27Okay

Cassie Young 3:27... and modeling and some comedy. Uh, and so we are... What was the question that you asked again?

Tim Fulton 3:34Oh, just that it was-

Cassie Young 3:35I lost it

Tim Fulton 3:35... a ticketed event.

Cassie Young 3:35Yes, it is ticketed, so it's $20. Um, and we are really excited to get out a really diverse group of people. If you look at our social media, our website, any of that stuff, you'll see a lot of photos and videos-

Tim Fulton 3:49Mm-hmm

Cassie Young 3:50... of the people involved in putting on Cloud City, which is artists and creative. So one of our ta- major tagline is what if a city was built by artists?

Tim Fulton 3:58Okay.

Cassie Young 3:58And that's what the whole theme of this, of Cloud City, we're taking to an extreme. So it's about imagining what do we want our city to be and building, actively building that together. I think there's a lot of division right now and, and depression around, you know, the things that are happening in our city that we don't necessarily like and want to see to change. Um, but there's not quite as much that's trying to build up and really actively imagine and work together to, you know, better things and really build things that are gonna make kinda those old ways of doing things obsolete.

Tim Fulton 4:30Okay. And what was sort of the... You- you've talked about the, the mission, but how did this happen? What was the inspiration for it-

Cassie Young 4:37Sure

Tim Fulton 4:37... to get it going?

Cassie Young 4:38So I really, uh, started getting more on the local creative and artist scene a couple of years ago. I just started really getting out there and going beyond my comfort zone-

Tim Fulton 4:47Mm-hmm

Cassie Young 4:47... to go to events, and I really started just being welcomed in by the people who were already throwing events very quickly, and we became friends. And I really do a lot of like promoting, I guess, the things that I go to on social media, so I had people commenting all the time to me, "What are all these events that you're going to and that you're posting about?" And, you know, a- and I would just realize that there's such a gap. A lot of my friends and my co-founders of Cloud City, um, are artists that throw local rock, hip hop, EDM shows, different art events around town, and they have a big need to try to pull new people into that scene and get people out to these events. And then I see this disconnect where there's all these people that want to know that things like that are happening in Columbus and-

Tim Fulton 5:31Mm-hmm

Cassie Young 5:31... to get out to them. And I think that even once people know, there's still this barrier where, you know, you have to kinda get over that, oh, am I gonna know anyone at this event?

Tim Fulton 5:40Mm-hmm.

Cassie Young 5:40Am I already tapped into that community? And so Cloud City is really an attempt to give a platform for a lot of these really cool things that are happening across mediums in, in the art and local creative world together in one place. And if you look, uh, like I said, at the photos and videos of our social media and website, you'll notice that the people that attend our events and that put them on are extremely diverse, and, uh, there aren't very many public spaces in Columbus where I think that that's true and where a lot of different kind of communities are coming together.

Tim Fulton 6:12Mm-hmm.

Cassie Young 6:12Um, so the original question once again? I feel like I get on tangents.

Tim Fulton 6:17No, no, no, you, uh, just the original one was what-

Cassie Young 6:19How it came-

Tim Fulton 6:20... how it came together

Cassie Young 6:21... how it came together. So- In about December of 2018, so like nine months ago-

Tim Fulton 6:27Mm-hmm

Cassie Young 6:28... um, we just, I approached my friend Sam Rothstein, who throws a lot of these events around town, and said, "We should throw a festival." And he was like, "You know, I've been thinking about this for years." Um, but he's used to throwing smaller shows, and I'm a project manager for government. So I was like, "You know, I c- I can project manage and figure out how to throw a festival maybe."

Tim Fulton 6:49Mm-hmm.

Cassie Young 6:49Um, so-

Tim Fulton 6:50But you had not done anything like this before

Cassie Young 6:51... no, I've never thr- I've never organized a large scale event or anything like that. Um, neither has he. Isaiah Boyd, who's, um, an artist who's also throwing with a, a, throwing it with us, has never done something quite this scale.

Tim Fulton 7:03Mm-hmm.

Cassie Young 7:03So, um, pretty much everyone involved is just, it's very grassroots, very much figuring it out. But we do have some really great partners. So early on, um, we got in with, uh, Wild Goose Creative.

Tim Fulton 7:13Mm-hmm.

Cassie Young 7:14And they've been an amazing fiscal sponsor that has not only, um, agreed to be like the nonprofit that, uh, helps us take donations and things like that, but they've really been mentors and have helped us navigate some of these government processes and, you know, different licenses and things that we-

Tim Fulton 7:29Yeah

Cassie Young 7:29... ne- really needed help with. And then the Franklinton Board of Trade is also one of our sponsors.

Tim Fulton 7:34Cool. And so the, just to go back to the ticketing, 'cause a lot of festivals like this-

Cassie Young 7:37Mm-hmm

Tim Fulton 7:37... I feel like, unless it's a, you know, a commercial music festival-

Cassie Young 7:41Mm-hmm

Tim Fulton 7:41... which you would expect to pay for-

Cassie Young 7:43Sure

Tim Fulton 7:43... an arts festival is not necessarily one that you would expect-

Cassie Young 7:45Sure

Tim Fulton 7:45... to pay for. Is that simply just to, you know, make sure that you're paying for everything-

Cassie Young 7:51Mm-hmm

Tim Fulton 7:51... that you're doing now, and also hopefully have some revenue that you can j- use for next year-

Cassie Young 7:57Exactly

Tim Fulton 7:57... in order to make it sustainable?

Cassie Young 7:59Exactly. So we are doing this, uh, without any major funding.

Tim Fulton 8:02Okay.

Cassie Young 8:02So, uh, this is really just us self-funding this. And, uh, we do definitely have, uh, some community sponsors that are, uh, you know, Mikey's Late Night Slice is donating a pizza to the green room, and, um, Cova Cowork and, and Bottoms Up is, uh, donating a c- uh, their cotton candy machine for the day. So we have some smaller sponsors, but generally this is us coming together to make this happen, and the $20 ticket price is, that we, we want it to be an accessible event, that it's not gonna be so expensive that people can't get in. We think the event truly is worth much more than that.

Tim Fulton 8:32Mm-hmm.

Cassie Young 8:33Um, but we wanna be accessible, yet we want to be able to, like you said, break even, maybe even have a little bit in the bank for the next things we do. And Cloud City, we don't intend to necessarily be an annual festival. So we-

Tim Fulton 8:44Okay

Cassie Young 8:44... um, actually I think it's, it's very common that you find annual events, and instead we want to be something that's a little more elusive and may pop up two years from now, and maybe have smaller events that incorporate some of these elements along the way.

Tim Fulton 8:58Okay. Talk about sort of the environment that you see interact- going to these other events-

Cassie Young 9:04Mm-hmm

Tim Fulton 9:05... interacting with the folks that are putting it together. I think sort of the, the elephant in the room that we've talked about here in the past at least with, when talking about festivals is that, you know, Independence Day has gone away at this point.

Cassie Young 9:17Mm-hmm.

Tim Fulton 9:17So talk about sort of the, the state of things now that Independence Day is gone, which I think everyone certainly has respect for what it did, uh, the 10 years that it was around. What's filling that gap?

Cassie Young 9:30Mm-hmm.

Tim Fulton 9:30What are the other things that you see that are happening?

Cassie Young 9:32I think it's a lot of smaller events-

Tim Fulton 9:35Mm-hmm

Cassie Young 9:35... uh, really is what's currently filling the gap. There are some festivals that have been around for some years now, so they didn't necessarily, you know, but, but I think that there's even more of a market for them now in some ways. Um, we have a bunch that have already happened this summer. Like I said, some that have sort of been around, like Narbecue, for example, is a music festival that moved from being a house party to an actual festival this year, this summer. Um-

Tim Fulton 10:01And what would you, what kind of festival is that? It's a music festival, but-

Cassie Young 10:04It's EDM, rock, a l- maybe a little bit of hip hop in there. Um, but that's mostly... They, they did have some comedy on their lineup as well, um-

Tim Fulton 10:11Okay

Cassie Young 10:11... fire dancers, things like that. Um, and then we have What Fest was new this year. So the, in terms of kind of what's new, I would say those are two of the big ones. What Fest being an EDM-centric, um, and visual art-centric festival. They had theirs at the, uh, same venue that we're gonna have ours at, 400 West Rich.

Tim Fulton 10:28Mm-hmm.

Cassie Young 10:28Um, they did a really amazing job. And then, um, we have some festivals that have been around for a minute, like 2X2 Hip Hop Festival. Um, that is an interesting one because they, it is hip hop centric, but it also has a lot of like graffiti art and, um, they had skateboarding and things like that. Um, Front Stage Fest, which is a kinda multi-genre music. Uh, I'm trying to think, what other ones did we talk about before?

Tim Fulton 10:52Well, coming up just right after your festival, 934 Gallery-

Cassie Young 10:56Yes

Tim Fulton 10:56... and Milo Grogan-

Cassie Young 10:57Yes

Tim Fulton 10:57... has, I believe it's a two-day festival. And all these festivals, frankly, most of them have passed for this year.

Cassie Young 11:03Right.

Tim Fulton 11:04But, uh, we'll link to all the festivals in the show notes, and certainly give them shout-outs as they're, as they're coming up next year. Um-

Cassie Young 11:12There's also some giants too, like the Dublin Irish Fest already happened. That's huge.

Tim Fulton 11:16Right.

Cassie Young 11:16I'm from Dublin, and so, um, and then we have Upper Arlington. We have all of these kind of, um, smaller festivals that are-

Tim Fulton 11:23The community

Cassie Young 11:24... centric to-

Tim Fulton 11:25Right

Cassie Young 11:25... their own even smaller communities, yeah.

Tim Fulton 11:28Absolutely. I guess I'm excited to see so many folks sort of filling that gap that Independence Day filled, and take it, and doing it independently, right?

Cassie Young 11:39Yes.

Tim Fulton 11:39And sort of finding the resources that they need in order to get it done.

Cassie Young 11:44Yeah.

Tim Fulton 11:44Because I think a lot of times in the past people are like, "I wanna see something like this happen. Why doesn't this happen?"

Cassie Young 11:51Right.

Tim Fulton 11:52And- Folks in Columbus have s- risen up and sort of said, "I can do that."

Cassie Young 11:56Sure.

Tim Fulton 11:56And they're lucky to have resources like Wild Goose Creative-

Cassie Young 12:00Yes

Tim Fulton 12:00... like GCAC sort of saying, "Here's how you do that."

Cassie Young 12:04Right.

Tim Fulton 12:05And-

Cassie Young 12:05And, and it's amazing. Like, Wild Goose Creative, they, their mission is to operate at the, like, uh, intersection of art, risk, and meaning. And not that they didn't know us at all or, you know, had some familiarity with us, and we'd, you know, booked shows at their venue before, but they really took, you know, a risk, you know, working with us. And they were just from the beginning so giving. And I think that in other cities, that's not necessarily the case. And so in Columbus, you're right. I think there's a huge entrepreneurial creative spirit here right now.

Tim Fulton 12:33Mm-hmm.

Cassie Young 12:34And especially, I think one of the things that I started to say that's, uh, filling the gap, uh, starting to pop up to fill the gap are smaller events that may eventually turn into festivals, that there are just so many smaller micro events that are happening on a weekly basis-

Tim Fulton 12:49Yeah

Cassie Young 12:50... um, that are popping up in Columbus. And so people really are feeling empowered to do their own thing and not feel like you have to be an established business to throw a festival, and that's what we're hoping to inspire in people, too. I saw What Fest last year-

Tim Fulton 13:03Mm-hmm

Cassie Young 13:03... and I was like, "You know, I know the guys that are throwing this," and, um, they really impressed me with, like, what they did. And I was like, "You know what? Maybe we can do, you know, a festival, too." So I think it's about really inspiring everyone to kinda figure out what your lane is. So, like, we have the African American Cultural Festival. Um, we have so many different things, and I think it's good to either find, like, something more niche like that-

Tim Fulton 13:26Mm-hmm

Cassie Young 13:26... or to do something like we're doing, which is not necessarily niche. Actually, what we're doing is almost, like, the opposite of niche in some ways-

Tim Fulton 13:32Right

Cassie Young 13:32... because we have so many mediums and so many things. But it's, um, niche in that it's something that doesn't exist currently or something that's sim- more similar to an Independence Day where you have a lot of different things converging, uh, that we think that there's a gap for that.

Tim Fulton 13:46Yeah. I, I guess I'm curious what, what would you, you would say to somebody who looks at a festival like yours or even one of these other festivals and says, "I don't really know if that's for me."

Cassie Young 13:59I think we need things for everyone. You know-

Tim Fulton 14:01Right

Cassie Young 14:01... Columbus is a huge city. It's growing so quickly, and I know that there's a lot of... There's people moving here all the time.

Tim Fulton 14:08Mm-hmm.

Cassie Young 14:08And I'm so surprised that, you know, just being, it being my hometown, to hear the way that other people really enjoy Columbus, but that if we're gonna kinda keep that spirit alive, people have to know about what's going on here. And like I said, there's this gap where I think not enough people know that there is... Like, not that there's a festival for everything, but there are festivals going on every weekend pretty much, of the summer at least, and even sometimes throughout the winter. There's, um, Steadfast Festival that's in March that is more of a, um, rock-type festival, independent festival. So there's things happening all the time, and I think there's something for everyone if you look at smaller events on up to festivals. We just have to, I think, get the information more out there and, and have these things highlighted on things like the Confluence Cast.

Tim Fulton 14:52Is there a r- Well, thank you for the shout-out. But what's the, is there a repository for these things, do you feel like?

Cassie Young 14:58Mm-hmm.

Tim Fulton 14:59Like, how do you find out? Uh, how, how would you recommend somebody find out about-

Cassie Young 15:02Mm, mm

Tim Fulton 15:03... these, you know, smaller festivals, smaller events?

Cassie Young 15:06Sure.

Tim Fulton 15:06Like, other than, "Hey, promoters/organizers, do a better job"-

Cassie Young 15:11Sure

Tim Fulton 15:11... is there a central reposi- I know Co- just to give a shout-out-

Cassie Young 15:15Mm

Tim Fulton 15:15... to our presenting sponsor, that, uh, you know, Columbus Underground does a pretty good job-

Cassie Young 15:19Yes

Tim Fulton 15:20... of doing a roundup of here's what's coming up.

Cassie Young 15:22Yes.

Tim Fulton 15:22They do their Mega Weekend. They also have a, an, a, you know, a post that's updated pretty regularly of here's all the festivals-

Cassie Young 15:29Mm-hmm

Tim Fulton 15:29... that are coming up. But is there sort of a... Do people have to lean on Facebook to, to like-

Cassie Young 15:35They do

Tim Fulton 15:36... find out-

Cassie Young 15:37Yeah

Tim Fulton 15:37... what, what's going on?

Cassie Young 15:38I think they... The unfortunate answer is that you really have to be a little of everywhere.

Tim Fulton 15:43Yeah.

Cassie Young 15:43Um, because ultimately I haven't found a place. I think the one you mentioned is probably closest to the most comprehensive we have.

Tim Fulton 15:51Mm-hmm.

Cassie Young 15:51Um, Experience Columbus has a calendar, but I don't tend to see too many, like, newer or smaller things on there. Um-

Tim Fulton 15:58It's the established stuff, right?

Cassie Young 15:59Yeah, it's the established stuff. It's more family-friendly focused things-

Tim Fulton 16:03Yeah

Cassie Young 16:03... it seems. Um, so actually I, uh, and a friend started an account on Instagram called The Move 614. We don't have the time to put into it to make it quite what we would like it to be, but that was an attempt to highlight some of these events that are not on those more official calendars, um, for people. So we put out, um... I can't say we've been doing it every single week, but we typically put out a weekly graphic that sorta breaks down what events are going on that week. And we generally do whoever sends up us those events or the ones we know about. So-

Tim Fulton 16:33Right

Cassie Young 16:34... we, I also have a Google Calendar that I created called The Move 614, and I have probably, like, 100 people on there. And I tell people, "If you wanna be added to it, just let me know and send me events, and I'll put it on there." I know a lot of people use that calendar. So people are looking for ways to kind of crowdsource these events. Um, and I, I do wish that there was one platform that sort of did that a little bit better than, than a what I... or more comprehensively than I currently see now.

Tim Fulton 16:57Yeah.

Cassie Young 16:57And I think it's just a capacity thing, and no specific business has been built around that being kind of the focus. Like, Columbus Underground's doing so much else in reporting that, you know-

Tim Fulton 17:06Absolutely

Cassie Young 17:07... you have-

Tim Fulton 17:07Well, and, like, I used to, year, in the, in, you know, three business lives ago, I worked for the Columbus Alive.

Cassie Young 17:13Mm-hmm.

Tim Fulton 17:13And we had, like, a full-time calendar editor.

Cassie Young 17:16Yeah.

Tim Fulton 17:16That that was their job-

Cassie Young 17:17Mm-hmm

Tim Fulton 17:18... to, you know, make sure that all the events were listed in the paper and online every week. I remember back in, like, this was probably the early or to mid-2000s, that you would go to bars, and there was this guy, I don't know who it was, please get in contact, uh, w- who would do full-scale posters that would just say at the top, "Columbus sucks because you suck." And then it would be a monthly roundup of the-

Cassie Young 17:44I've heard of that

Tim Fulton 17:45... of the underground punk shows that were happening.

Cassie Young 17:46Oh my gosh.

Tim Fulton 17:46And, like, yeah, that's pretty niche-y.

Cassie Young 17:48Yeah.

Tim Fulton 17:49But- That's the kind of stuff that I wanna see.

Cassie Young 17:53Yeah, and I actually listened to, um, a 614 Startups podcast-

Tim Fulton 17:58Mm-hmm

Cassie Young 17:58... episode with a woman from, I think the company was called PopCom.

Tim Fulton 18:03Okay.

Cassie Young 18:03Um, not related to what she's currently doing, but she talked about how back in, I think it was early 2000s, maybe even late '90s, when the internet first started becoming more of a thing, they were, uh, they had The Urban Star, I think was the name of it.

Tim Fulton 18:17Okay.

Cassie Young 18:18And it was essentially attempting this, and they would actually go to, you know, events and do live kind of, um, broadcasting of what was going on at those events.

Tim Fulton 18:27Okay.

Cassie Young 18:28So I think that it was, it's really interesting to hear that there were things like that sort of around then, um, that were also trying to get at the how do we get more of this information and bridge the gap between people are, who, who are trying to promote their events and creating more platforms where they can do that, and then people who wanna know about events and get c- more connected into the types of communities and events that they'd like to be a part of, to be able to do that.

Tim Fulton 18:50Absolutely. Well, and I think about stuff like Time Out New York and, like, the, I don't think we need a magazine that's, like-

Cassie Young 18:57Mm

Tim Fulton 18:57... totally dedicated-

Cassie Young 18:58No

Tim Fulton 18:58... to that kind of stuff, but just more resources.

Cassie Young 19:01Yes.

Tim Fulton 19:01And I, I do wanna give a, a shout-out to Joel Treadway, who does cringe.com.

Cassie Young 19:07Mm.

Tim Fulton 19:07'Cause he ha- he does a layout every single week, and he has been for 20 years-

Cassie Young 19:12Mm. Mm, mm

Tim Fulton 19:12... of here are-

Cassie Young 19:13Mm

Tim Fulton 19:13... all the, uh, at least musical event-

Cassie Young 19:15Yeah

Tim Fulton 19:15... music events that are coming up.

Cassie Young 19:17Mm-hmm.

Tim Fulton 19:17Uh, and he'll give some amount of editorial background on, like, "These are the picks-

Cassie Young 19:22Yeah

Tim Fulton 19:22... but here's everything."

Cassie Young 19:23And it, and that's the thing we need, too, I think, is, like I said, the thing that's tough is I think even if there was a comprehensive database that was easily searchable, user-friendly-

Tim Fulton 19:35Yeah

Cassie Young 19:35... that gave you the ability to, like, you know, search for different types of events and had everything on there, there is still the need to actually pull those people in and make them feel comfortable, make them welcome, make them maybe, you know, how do you get someone to go to a new part of town they haven't been to or go-

Tim Fulton 19:51Right

Cassie Young 19:51... to a venue they've never been to, or maybe show up even if they don't have a friend that will come with them. And so-

Tim Fulton 19:55Yeah

Cassie Young 19:55... Cloud City, we're trying to be not only, like, a platform and an event, but also a community, and really trying to branch out and figure out how do we bring new people in. And the way that we think we do that is through inclu- being inclusive in terms of our event. Like we said, the types of people that are, um, organizing our event are the people that we're highlighting. They're the artists, the creatives. And so Cloud City, we, uh, we're, we want everyone there. We want the general public, even if you don't consider yourself an artist or a creative, even though I think everyone's creative in a lot of ways, um, in a, in, in the lane that they work in. Uh, but we, we are gonna be an event that's gonna be heavily attended by creatives and artists themselves, um, and sort of, uh, creating this, this more tight-knit community, um, that, because right now, like many things, like government, like business, we're very siloed in terms of an artist community-

Tim Fulton 20:42Yeah

Cassie Young 20:42... by genre, by medium, and I think having more events that bring more of that together is just gonna naturally grow all of our, um, ability to bring more people to our events and, and create kind of bigger communities within those different areas.

Tim Fulton 20:56Can you talk about your choice to make it 18 plus?

Cassie Young 20:59Y- just for liability purposes, honestly, that we-

Tim Fulton 21:02Okay

Cassie Young 21:02... we don't know when it comes to serving alcohol and all those things, what all the liabilities we need to worry about if there's children.

Tim Fulton 21:09You're just trying to avoid a problem.

Cassie Young 21:11Yeah.

Tim Fulton 21:11Okay.

Cassie Young 21:11Honestly, we thought about making it all ages even, even, like, a month ago. We were like, "Should we change it to all ages?" 'Cause we do, I think, I s- I think, uh, What Fest was all ages. Um, I saw some kids there at least. And so, we just struggled with it a little bit, but ultimately said, you know, just to avoid any potential legal issues because we're not super lawyered up. We're a first-year event.

Tim Fulton 21:31Right.

Cassie Young 21:31Um, you know, that's, that's the reason for that.

Tim Fulton 21:32You're being careful.

Cassie Young 21:33Yeah.

Tim Fulton 21:33And that's really it.

Cassie Young 21:34Yep.

Tim Fulton 21:35Cool, cool. Talk, I wanna give you the opportunity to talk about Matter News-

Cassie Young 21:38Sure

Tim Fulton 21:38... and what the mission is there and what you're doing with that project.

Cassie Young 21:41Amazing, yeah. So with Matter News, um, we are a little over a year old.

Tim Fulton 21:46Mm-hmm.

Cassie Young 21:46Um, we're a startup news outlet, and, uh, we will be at Cloud City, and we are, uh, really just trying to evolve what we think is a, a somewhat broken news model. And so, uh, we are nonprofit. That's one of the major issues with the news industry and all the cuts and consolidations is that, um, the advertising model is really dying because of Fa- the Facebooks and the Googles and things like that. So we're nonprofit. Um, we're big on accessibility, so we, we don't wanna have a paywall. Um, anyone can access our content. We're multimedia, so much like Cloud City, we really care about making sure that we're creating content that speaks to people and tells stories in the medium that best tells that story and that can convey that message and what's going on. So whether that's audio, um, it could be, we're working on a podcast series right now. We have some mini documentaries coming out. Our website, matternews.org, has, um, all kinds of written content, even a interactive map of Columbus where we input data from the census where you can actually zoom in on your neighborhood and it sh- and then you can zoom out too to see how economically segregated Columbus is, um, eh, because it was once named the number two most economically segregated, uh, city in, in the country.

Tim Fulton 22:56Mm-hmm.

Cassie Young 22:56And so we're very multimedia and, uh, once again, the people that are creating our content are artists and creatives, and we have a lot of diversity, especially throughout our board and our team. Uh, and we think that we're trying to be really accessible is the last thing, um, in terms of giving people a voice and not expecting people to come to us in the newsroom. But we got a small grant from ComFest to build a, um, mobile, a portable studio we're calling Matter Mobile.

Tim Fulton 23:25Okay.

Cassie Young 23:25And we took it to ComFest and debuted it there, and we'll be taking it to, um, C- Cloud City it will be there. We'll take it to, uh, an event at Gravity next month. That's a Yelp event. So we're taking it eventually out into neighborhoods as well and telling people, "Hey, we're gonna be in the Beechwald neighborhood today, and we wanna hear from you about what you're seeing in your neighborhood." And we're issue-based, so right now we're only covering the development of Columbus.

Tim Fulton 23:48Okay.

Cassie Young 23:48Its growth and development. Eventually, once we are a fully funded operation, and we'll have a crowdfunding campaign in November and December, um, we will probably have a team around a few issues at a time. And we will choose those issues with community input. So we're, that's another reason for this, uh, mobile studio is so that we can go out into communities and really be, um, ears to the ground understanding what are those important things that people want their news to be looking into. 'Cause one of our big frustrations with the news is just that it doesn't always seem to cover the most pressing things to us.

Tim Fulton 24:21Mm-hmm.

Cassie Young 24:21I think that's somewhat a symptom of the advertiser model and, and different things. So that's how we're trying to do things different.

Tim Fulton 24:27That's great.

Cassie Young 24:27Yeah.

Tim Fulton 24:28Anything else sort of about Columbus that you either see that's happening well that, that Columbus is doing well or things that maybe aren't going as well and should have more, more focus?

Cassie Young 24:39Sure. Uh, so yeah, a sort of underlying thing of Cloud City too, uh, that relates to what we're looking into with, with Matter is it seems like a lot of the infrastructure and what's being built isn't always catered toward, um, the home-town- home-town home-grow-grown heroes.

Tim Fulton 24:56Okay.

Cassie Young 24:56Um, a lot of, I- in my opinion, our policies even when it comes to business development or economic development is centered around how do we attract people here.

Tim Fulton 25:06Mm-hmm.

Cassie Young 25:06Um, putting a lot of, uh, focus and even money behind that. Whereas I think that if we focus a little bit more of our money on trying to lift up the entrepreneurs, the artists, the people that are here, we could birth the next Amazon rather than trying to attract Amazon here and it doesn't have any loyalty c- to Columbus and will leave for the next best offer. Um, so with, uh, Matter, we're looking into the economic development and things of Columbus. And one thing that I'll say, uh, is, is not just my opinion but is actually proven in a city report. In 2017 the city of Columbus did a report, uh, or had hired companies to basically help it determine what are our development goals because they didn't have any clearly like stated ones.

Tim Fulton 25:50Yeah.

Cassie Young 25:50So they had them look through their different initiatives and say, "What do y- what do you surmise are are our goals, um, based on what you're seeing?"

Tim Fulton 25:57Yeah.

Cassie Young 25:57And then the city agreed that basically they had six goals, and I think the goals are amazing. So the, it's a downtown powerhouse, a regional, um, economic engine, job center, um, revitalize neighborhoods, sustainable and equitable development.

Tim Fulton 26:13Yeah.

Cassie Young 26:14The issue is they also had those companies, uh, evaluate how are we doing on these goals? Are our policies aligned with these goals? And they found that the first three goals relating to, you know, um, job and regional economic growth we're doing very well at and, and revitalizing downtown. But when it comes to generally revitalizing neighborhoods and ma- doing development in a way that's sustainable and equitable, we're y- we don't have as many policies and, and money behind that. And so I think that's why we're seeing a lot of the development trends we're seeing and people are being, um, frustrated that they feel like they're seeing a lot of high, uh, high-end development, yet we have all of these issues with affordable housing. And there are new initiatives from the city and there are public-private partnerships that are cropping up and, and even startup, you know, businesses that are aimed at tackling that issue.

Tim Fulton 27:04Yeah.

Cassie Young 27:04In my opinion, there is not enough being done at that end of things.

Tim Fulton 27:07Well, and it's why you're seeing a negative reaction to that amount of development and what's happening in terms of tax credits and-

Cassie Young 27:14Yes

Tim Fulton 27:15... and everything.

Cassie Young 27:15Absolutely.

Tim Fulton 27:16So cool.

Cassie Young 27:17Yeah.

Tim Fulton 27:17Cassie, thank you so much for your time.

Cassie Young 27:18Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.

Tim Fulton 27:29Thank you for listening to the Confluence Cast presented by Columbus Underground. Again, you can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Please rate, subscribe, share this episode of the Confluence Cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite organizer. If you're interested in sponsoring the Confluence Cast, get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info@theconfluencecast.com. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Philip Cogley. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.