The Creative Coast’s blogspot is Savannah’s sounding board for local thinkers, innovators, wanderers and wonderers. Guest bloggers share their thoughts, opinions and creative noodling from all over the map. This week’s blog is from Kayne Lanahan, CEO and founder of Savannah Stopover Music Festival.  Read on for Kayne’s notes on what it takes to create a mushrooming music scene…..

Photo by Matthew McCully

Just last week the manager of one of Savannah’s Broughton Street retail stores professed a profound desire to get involved in this year’s Savannah Stopover Music Festival because she was willing to do anything to help improve the “crappy” music scene in this town.

I hear this sentiment expressed over and over again in Savannah, primarily from the 18-34 year old demographic. Two years ago I would have stood there shaking my head and nodding “yes, yes, I hear you, I agree” but now I find myself asking the harder questions: What constitutes a “Music Scene” in a city? What if my scene is different than your scene? What if there is a “scene” and we just don’t do a very good job of promoting it across Savannah’s many microcosms of youth?

The Creative Coast’s blogspot is Savannah’s sounding board for local thinkers, innovators, wanderers and wonderers. Guest bloggers share their thoughts, opinions and creative noodling from all over the map. This week’s blog is from Roger Moss, co-founder and artistic director of The Savannah Children’s Choir.  Follow Roger’s notes below to hear you can make every year an exceptional year….  

ex•cep•tion•al

adj.

1. Being an exception; uncommon.

2. Well above average; extraordinary.

Three years ago the Savannah Children’s Choir was honored to have Keith Miller, a bass from the Metropolitan Opera, as our Artist in Residence. During his first session with our children, Keith made the statement that getting “100 is just the beginning.” This statement should make all arts organizations pause and reflect.

In other words, getting the notes played perfectly, with the correct inflections, tone, etc., is just the beginning. What will get audiences back and excited is when your organization is exceptional.

What is exceptional about your art? What is beyond “100’?

Why would or should audiences get excited about your art?

Have you really discovered your “voice”?

If you are an arts organization, what stands out about your work?

The Creative Coast’s blogspot is Savannah’s sounding board for local thinkers, innovators, wanderers and wonderers. Guest bloggers share their thoughts, opinions and creative noodling from all over the map. This week’s blog provides updates from Jake Hodesh, executive director & chief rocket launcher for The Creative Coast.  Read on and fire away…..

The past few months have been super busy times at The Creative Coast. In addition to hosting multiple events, we’ve also been developing and launching some really cool new projects. Here’s a peek at some things which will interest you:

Last month The Creative Coast launched DonorCharge, a credit card processing program designed to minimize merchant fees while simultaneously allowing local merchants to help The Creative Coast continue its mission of supporting locally grown businesses and entrepreneurs.

The concept is simple: provide merchants with an alternative to the expensive credit card processing fee systems offered by major financial service institutions. Merchants have the opportunity to pay a lower transaction fee while The Creative Coast, as the sponsor of DonorCharge, receives a small percentage of the transaction fee. Participating merchants save money on processing fees which means more revenue per credit card transaction for them, while The Creative Coast earns a small percentage from the transaction fee itself. The Creative Coast’s cut comes from the transaction fee, not the merchants’ pockets. The merchant keeps more of their money and The Creative Coast generates a little revenue itself. Everyone’s a winner…except maybe the big banks.

Every other week or so we’ll turn this space over to a guest blogger so you can get thoughts, opinions and creative noodling from all over the map. This week’s guest blogger is Kayne Lanahan, founder of and Mothership for Savannah Stopover Music Festival and themusicfile.com.  Turn up the tunes and listen to Kayne’s take on entrepreneurship….It’s hard to believe that it’s been 23 years since Nike first coined the phrase that has been helping us all get off our butts and pursue our goals (in sports and in life), but it’s a rare occasion when you actually get the chance to literally just do it.

It’s been just over four weeks since the inaugural Savannah Stopover Music Festival ended and I’ve taken quite a bit of time to debrief, reflect and hopefully learn after experiencing one of the most challenging yet rewarding projects of my life. This is not just a personal Just Do It! story, but one that involves the collective energy, hard work and enthusiasm of an entire group of people who literally wouldn’t take no for an answer.