CATAPULT to Host First In-Person Pitch Day in Two Years
FREDERICTON – On Sunday, April 2, ArtsLink NB’s CATAPULT Arts Accelerator will host its first in-person pitch day since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. With the event quickly approaching, Jericho Knopp, programming director of ArtsLink NB, says that she and everyone else are extremely excited.
What is CATAPULT?
CATAPULT is a business accelerator program that focuses specifically on artists and their art businesses.
Knopp says that, over the past decade or so, there has been an increasing buzz around business accelerator programs. These programs aim to help individuals create new businesses and “create up-and-coming entrepreneurs”.
“But there wasn’t really anything like that for businesses in the creative sector, or for artists specifically whose work is not going to become a multi-million-dollar industry,” Knopp tells Huddle.
Knopp says that CATAPULT Arts Accelerator was created with those sorts of people in mind: artists.
CATAPULT Arts Accelerator aims to help artists with the business aspect of their art through both a kind of classwork and mentorship-style program.
“It’s a mixture of business training, things like book-keeping, marketing, branding, all those kinds of things you need to know to run a business,” says Knopp. “As well as things that are specific to the creative sector.”
Throughout the program, members of CATAPULT Arts Accelerator would use a few different “pitch days” to display, discuss, and pitch their art and their business to others in the community.
CATAPULT Winter 2023 Pitch Day
After two years of virtual pitch days, CATAPULT Arts Accelerator will be hosting its first in-person event in Fredericton this weekend.
On April 2, members of CATAPULT Arts Accelerator will be at the Charlotte Street Arts Centre from 1:30 – 4:30 to pitch their art businesses, masking mandatory.
“All of our artists this session are actually visual artists,” Knopp tells Huddle. “[They] will be showing some examples of what they can do, and you can chat with them all.”
She says that some of the members present will be painters, graphic designers, photographers, jewelers, and more.
“I think it will be a good change of energy from the last few years when we’ve just had only the cohort in the room and then had them give their pitch basically to each other and a camera and then posting it online,” says Knopp.
After having years of virtual events, Knopp says that she is excited to be back in her element with the planning of in-person events and is very excited for the event to be held.
Ryley Roach is a Huddle student intern, based in Fredericton. Send her your feedback and story ideas: [email protected]