Artists Moving Their Work And Business Online

What would normally be a pitch to a roomful of other entrepreneurs and artists is now available online.

This year’s CATAPULT program, a business development group for artists run by ArtsNB, took seven pitches and made them virtual.

Jericho Knopp, CATAPULT program coordinator, said the program was originally postponed in March in the hopes that COVID-19 would blow over.

“And it didn’t, so what we did was we moved it to an online course, so we met every Friday and Saturday for eight weeks through Zoom,” she said.

Knopp said one of the great things about moving everything online was that more people were available whereas in the past there was sometimes scheduling conflict.

“It’s been really exciting. I worked on my web design skills a little bit, learned a little bit of code, so that was a fun experience for me. It was just really nice that we were able to do something, instead of having the program not really end, like culminate in an anticlimax,” she said.

Knopp said in the fall session, the CATAPULT program will be marketed as an online pitch day to bring together people all over the province who may not be able to afford to travel so far in time or money, or a disability that makes it difficult to leave their home much.

“Now it’s more important than ever to support the artists that we do have in New Brunswick so I think they really just gave it their all throughout their pitches,” she said

“Because they don’t know when they’re going to get another chance to do something like this and to share their work with the world.”

The artists are Sofia Cristanti, a painter and fibre artist; Sheryl Crowley, a mosaicist; Todd Fraser, an experimental filmmaker; Jonathan Hache a chiac hip hop artist; Kelley Joyce-Floyd, an acrylic visual artist, Melissa May, a wildlife and portrait artist, and Simmi Obscura, a mixed media artist and setting creator.