Sweets & Sounds Founder Angel Dahfay at last year’s Sweets & Sounds Con, held at NXTHVN in the city’s Dixwell neighborhood. This year, Creative U takes place on Oct. 11 and 12 between the Canal Dock Boathouse and the Adanti Student Center at SCSU. Lucy Gellman File Photo.
One “major” is built to help creatives break out of their boxes and think differently about the workforce. Another takes on cultural leadership, guiding artists through a path to management and arts administration that can sometimes feel intimidating. A third will make sure that arts and entrepreneurship aren’t such strange bedfellows after all.
And around them, there is a hands-on career fair and orientation, field trips to cultural spaces across New Haven, chances for mentorship, and a keynote from graphic designer and filmmaker Joe Perez.
Welcome to Creative U, a collaboration between Sweets & Sounds Entertainment, New Haven’s Department of Cultural Affairs and the Connecticut Office of the Arts coming to New Haven October 11 and 12. An outgrowth of last year’s Sweets & Sounds Convention, the two-day conference is meant to give artists, entrepreneurs and culture-bearers a place to share skills and navigate their work together, with the help of professionals already in the field.
It will take place between the Canal Dock Boathouse on New Haven’s Long Wharf and the Adanti Student Center at Southern Connecticut State University.
“This has been something that I’ve kind of been cultivating for the last three years, and being able to come here in 2024 and do it with the state and the City of New Haven is just super exciting,” said Sweets & Sounds Founder Angel Dahfay on a recent episode of WNHH Community Radio’s “Arts Respond.” “I’m just super happy to be able to partner with them and make this thing come alive.”
The conference—modeled loosely off a university welcome week, but squeezed into 48 hours—has been years in the making. Dahfay held the first Sweets & Sounds Convention in Hartford in 2021, just as people were beginning to emerge from their Cocid-enforced cocoons. At the time, “I was trying to find myself,” and the event revolved around the intersection of food and music.
From there, she continued building a network of support that centered Black and Brown creatives, from her semi-annual Jubilation dinners to an annual conference dedicated to creative and cultural entrepreneurship. She learned to ask for help, building partnerships with both working artists and arts administrators at the city and the state. She pushed herself outside of her comfort zone.
“I realized that, like, I’m not the only person who is struggling, trying to become an entrepreneur, or trying to take my talents to a job and feel comfortable, like I’m doing something there that I can take away,” she said. “Being able to do that last year … was definitely inspiring.”
Now, the next phase of that is here. Creative U begins Friday evening with a career and resource fair at the Canal Dock Boathouse, which in recent years has become a hub for arts and culture. Once there, attendees will be able to connect with fellow artists and scout out new opportunities for cultural and professional development. For Dahfay, it’s all about giving creatives the skills to know they’re not doing it alone.
“There’s so many talented people here in Connecticut and so many people don’t know about them, because they don’t scream it out or try to like, make it known,” she said. “For me, it’s super important because like, I know these people and I’ve worked with these people and I know the amount of work they’ve put in to be who they are now.”
On Saturday, that continues with multiple creative tracks—Dahfay prefers “majors,” in keeping with the university theme—taught by “deans” who are professionals in the field and largely sons and daughters of Connecticut. There is, for instance, a “Creative Workforce” major, with classes from PR professional Stacey Graham-Hunt, director and screenwriter Anthony Valentine, and visual artist Tara Blackwell, who works between New York and Connecticut.
Or a “creative entrepreneurship” option, with workshops taught by financial advisor Petra-Ann Brown, artist Andre Rochester, and professional coach Typhanie Winfield-Alexander. For those more interested in leadership, there are workshops with the Midnight Oil Collective’s Emily Roller and Frances Pollock, and Makerstate’s Jenny Larios Berlin and Peter Li. Most of the talent comes directly from Connecticut, dispelling the notion that there aren’t artists to turn to at home.
“As we were exploring this idea of university, we were thinking about redesigning the conference experience,” said Kolton Harris, a filmmaker, writer, musician and program associate for the Connecticut Office of the Arts. “Sometimes we rely on panels, and those are absolutely magnificent, but sometimes … we didn’t have something tangible to walk away with. So our first thought was, ‘Let’s turn the conference identity and think about it from a state of workshops and classes.’”
“One of the powers of coming together is that true transformation and community development in the ways that we believe Connecticut as a creative and cultural hub is gonna really expand and grow,” he later added. “It’s getting people from the different pockets [of the state] to come together and cultivate unity, and make the whole state feel like our home.”
Creative U culminates Saturday evening with field trips across New Haven, including to the Yale Schwarzman Center, NXTHVN and CITA Park. After months of planning, Dahfay is ready to jump in (she joked that she’s equally excited for the 13th, when she can decompress for the first time in months).
“I think it’s new, I think it’s different, I think it’s fresh,” she said. “Just being able to see the things that we’re able to do with it going forward—I feel like we need a mascot. We need a bunch of different things. So I’m just excited to see the growth in it.”
Learn more about and register for Creative U here. “Arts Respond” is a collaboration of WNHH Community Radio, the low-power sister station to the New Haven Independent, and the Arts Council of Greater New Haven.