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PechaKucha Night Cleveland Rocks!! A Night Featuring Creatives at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame!

Blog Date
Author(s)
Julie Smith
Stuart O. Smith, Jr.
Tags
Cleveland
PechaKucha
Rock N Roll Hall of Fame
North Coast Harbor
Museums
FRONT International

PechaKucha Night Cleveland Rocks at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame!
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PechaKucha Nights in Cleveland (@PKNCLE) rock, which is why we enjoy both attending them, and writing blog posts about them!! On Friday, August 25, 2017, it was very appropriate that the PechaKucha Night Cleveland Volume 31 (#PKNCLE31) rocked out at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (@RockHall)! The presenters reflected the creative spirit for which the Rock Hall is known.

 Nikki Delamotte of Cleveland.com (@NikkiDelamotte - @ClevelandDotCom) previewed the event in her article: Local creatives to tell their stories at PechaKucha at the Rock Hall

Here are our @sos_jr tweets and retweets from before the event. They give a background of what ended up taking place at the Rock Hall on the 25th of August.

Here are the August 25, 2017 tweets/retweets leading up to the evening's festivities:

Arriving at Cleveland's North Coast Harbor (@NCoastHarbor), we found it to be a beautiful evening to have PechaKucha Night Cleveland outdoors. From North Coast Harbor, there are always great views of the city and the lakefront.

Great views of Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland's North Coast Harbor during PechaKucha Night Cleveland Volume 31
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The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (@RockHall) was incredible in how they supported this PechaKucha Night Cleveland event! They went way beyond simply hosting the event. They promoted the evening and set up a special stage, including sound, video and lighting systems. They REALLY went over the top by providing FREE admission to the museum for all attending the PechaKucha Night Cleveland!

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame during PechaKucha Night Cleveland Volume 31
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The following tweets include photos of North Coast Harbor and of our tour of the Rock Hall.

Volume 31 - Presenters

We were told that over 500 people RSVP'd to hear these speakers. The first 50 ticket-holders won a special commemorative poster designed by Liz Maugans (@LizMaugans) for PechaKucha Night Cleveland Volume 31.

Special commemorative poster for PechaKucha Night Cleveland Volume 31
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The poster, entitled "The Magic Of Art," expressed how all the speakers represented the creative community of Cleveland.

Here is a list of the speakers in the order they presented:

  1. Stasia Karel (@Stasia_K)
     
    It was great to have Stasia speak as the Archivist & Assistant Curator at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (@RockHall) about the museum's collection.

  2. Laura Demarco (@LauraDeMarcoCle)
     
    We had never heard Laura speak before, but were very aware of her work in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and on Cleveland.com (@ClevelandDotCom). Her bio for the evening mentions how she "...covered Cleveland's cultural scene for 15 years for The Plain Dealer." We highly recommend following @LauraDeMarcoCle on Twitter to learn about events happening in Cleveland.
     
    It was great that she was able to speak at PechaKucha Night Cleveland Volume 31 to share some information from her new book Lost Cleveland. If you are a longtime Clevelander, you will recognize some of the photos she shared (see three tweets below with some of the photos).

  3. Annie Zaleski  (@AnnieZaleski)
     
    Annie's bio listed her as a "...Cleveland based freelance writer, and journalist focused on rock!" She talked about her love for the band R.E.M. (@remhq) and her interest in music. Stuart was able to talk to her briefly during the break and learn about her writing experences.

  4. Jacinda Walker (@MagentaPrints) 
     
    Diversity in the design field -- an issue we never had reason to think about before Jacinda's PechaKucha Night Cleveland talk. We enjoyed hearing her excitement about working with young people interested in the design field, and seeing photos of her interacting with them -- her passion is very contagious!
     
    Jacinda is the founder of designExplorr (@designExplorr), which is "the place where creative kids come to equip themselves for a career that combines their love of art with real-world tools." DesignExplorr opens doors to underrepresented youth in the design field. Jacinda is also chair of AIGA Cleveland's (@AIGAcleveland) Diversity Task Force. AIGA (@AIGAdesign) is the oldest and largest professional membership organization for design.

  5. Ryan Gullatt aka DJ Ryan Wolf  (@DJRyanWolf)
     
    Ryan is the official DJ for the Cleveland Browns (@Browns) and Z1079 Cleveland (@Z1079). Ryan had a very creative presentation in which his own image was placed in different settings. He used these photos to tell the story of his life. We liked how his talk ended with explaining how the different experiences in his life prepared him for what he is doing now. Here is part of his talk from our @sos_jr tweet video:

  6. Bruce Stacey II (@BrucieStacey) 
     
    Boy, did Bruce Stacey II have some stories to tell! As the lead visitor engagement specialist at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (@RockHall), he gets to interact with the public directly, and often learns about their personal connection with rock artists and Rock Hall artifacts. For example, he shared the story of a man who was visiting the museum and turned out to have been the tour bus driver for Johnny Cash.

  7. Fred Bidwell (@FredBidwell)
     
     Stuart had already read about the FRONT International (@FrontTriennial - #FRONTart2018) in Steven Litt's (@Steven_Litt ) August 4, 2016, article FRONT, a citywide art exhibit with global reach, will debut in Cleveland in 2018 (photos). We highly recommend people read this article to learn about the background of this project. We were very excited to hear more details about this inaugural, citywide, triennial art show, which will take place July 7 to Sept. 30, 2018.
     
    Fred shared some incredible photos of some of the artists whose work will be seen at the huge FRONT International 2018 citywide art show. Here is some information from the FRONT International website:

    FRONT is a new art triennial coming to Cleveland in the summer of 2018. This citywide art festival will bring together internationally and regionally recognized artists, curators, and scholars for a unique and engaging experience.

    The inaugural exhibition, titled An American City, proposes a new format for art triennials, and focuses on process, research, collaboration, and long-term engagement with the Northeast Ohio region via programming that includes artistic and curatorial residencies, a temporary art academy, a web-based art journal for the Midwest, museum exhibitions, site-specific artistic interventions across the city, as well as a series of solo and group exhibitions with a wide range of collaborations. 

  8. Laura Wimbels (@Wimbels) 
     
    A serendipitous photographic journey -- Laura talked about how her photography influenced her life. What started out as photos of her friends evolved into a much larger project -- Faces of Cleveland. She also spoke of the reaction to her photography book about Cleveland.
     
    You can find ordering information about Laura's book, Faces of Cleveland, on her Wimbels.com website and also at: FacesOfCLE.com

  9. Liz Maugans (@LizMaugans) 
     
    Liz is the co-founder and executive director of Zygote Press (@zygotepress). In her presentaton, she shared some photos of Cleveland art, but what interested us the most was when we recognized art installations that we had seen ourselves.
     
    It is interesting to note that Liz presented at the first PechaKucha Night Cleveland over eight years ago, and she designed the special "The Magic Of Art" commemorative poster for PechaKucha Night Cleveland Volume 31.  
     
    On September 2, 2017, Stuart visited the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland- MOCA (@MOCACleveland ) and saw some of the self-portraits of Cuyahoga County artists from The Artists' Trust project that Liz organized. Stuart really enjoyed seeing them, and highly recommends going to the The Artists' Trust project website to see more. See the four photos Stuart took at MOCA on Twitter here. This was one of the projects that Liz showed in her PechaKucha talk.

  10. Amanda King (@Just_AmandaKing)
     
    Stuart first learned of Shooting Without Bullets, which was founded by Amanda, when he attended the November 5, 2016, Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland - MOCA (@MOCACleveland) For Freedoms: Town Hall Discussion with Hank Willis Thomas. Learn more in our For Freedoms: MOCA Cleveland Town Hall Discussion blog post. 
     
    Amanda was joined on stage by youths from the Shooting Without Bullets project. We highly recommend you go to the About Shooting Without Bullets web page to not only read more about the project, but watch the Shooting Without Bullets Day of Justice 2016 video.
     
    The following is a short part of the presentation from our @sos_jr tweet video:

Here are our @sos_jr tweets/retweets that were shared during the presentations:

Post-PechaKucha tweets/retweets:

 

Related Blog Posts

We have now written eleven blog posts about the great PechaKucha events (click here to view) in Cleveland (@PKNCLE) and also in Akron (@PKAkron) . If you are interested in learning more about PechaKucha Night Cleveland, please see:

Last year, the PechaKucha Night Cleveland leadership team (@PKNCLE) asked Stuart to do a special PechaKucha Talk at the first-time-ever PechaKucha Night Cleveland Past Presenters Happy Hour. See Stuart's PechaKucha slides, video of Stuart's talk, and read more in our blog post: A PechaKucha Talk by Stuart O. Smith, Jr., about PechaKucha Night Cleveland

You can learn more about other events we have written about at North Coast Harbor in our blog posts here, and specifically at the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame here.

 

We really appreciate the PechaKucha Night Cleveland leadership team, presenters, and sponsors.

Thank you, PechaKucha Night Cleveland Leadership Team!
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