Using cultural strategies to bring Creative Resilience to life
The Website
Spitfire partnered with the People’s Project, a Los Angeles nonprofit powered by the Los Angeles Federation of Labor, to produce Creative Resilience, an artful community experience that amplified the voices of BIPOC Angeleno workers, sounded the call for economic justice and celebrated the city’s vibrant cultural history of resilience. The 10-day event took place in October 2022 in the heart of Los Angeles’ bustling arts district. For the project, Spitfire transformed a 10,000-square-foot raw warehouse space into a creative hub and gathering space full of joy and celebration focused on economic and racial justice. Spitfire commissioned work from 50 artists and performers and brought together activists, celebrities and local leaders to celebrate the working people who make up the heart and soul of Los Angeles.
To inform the public about the community event, Spitfire’s team partnered with a web designer to build from scratch an online hub that served as a one-stop shop for Creative Resilience. On the website, we provided not only all the information that people needed to attend, but we also used it as an opportunity to bring them into our world of cultural celebration.
We commissioned a web designer to create a bold visual look for the site that reflected the energy of the art that hung on the gallery walls. For the web creative brief, we worked closely with the People’s Project to ensure that we were capturing the spirit of Los Angeles workers while building something that invited people to come experience the art, performances and discussions.
On the site’ homepage, we featured the themes of the Creative Resilience; highlights of the artwork; as well as a navigation bar with shortcuts to more information on the artists, music, dance and comedy performers, and workshops and discussions. To help people get a clear sense of all of the programming, we included a downloadable calendar.
On the site’s interior pages, we gave visitors the full picture of each of the areas of programming including art/artists, performances, discussions/workshops. The art/artists page featured bios, photos and social media links for each of the artists. The performances page included each day’s lineup of performers, a Spotify playlist of music from the performers and music videos. The discussions/workshops page highlighted each session’s leaders and topics. We created a dedicated page highlighting The People’s Project.
Beyond serving as a source of information about Creative Resilience, the website played a central role in our marketing efforts. We used targeted digital ads on Facebook and Instagram as well as programmatic ads and organic social posts to drive people to the site. We captured the email addresses of people interested in the event, which we then used to send regular updates on programming, information on COVID-19 protocols, information on participating artists and details on the mutual aid expo. We made it easy for people to register for specific programming through a highly visible Eventbrite link at the top of the homepage. Our coordinated use of email, digital advertising, Eventbrite, organic social media and the website helped to drive attendance to the event.
To ensure that visitors to Creative Resilience had all the information they needed to attend, we built an FAQ section that included information on parking, food and drink, COVID-19 safety guidelines, and Spanish language materials and services.
