KANE – PA Wilds Center for Entrepreneurship invites visual artists and graphic designers in the Pennsylvania Wilds who are working to scale their businesses to compete in an innovative new investment program, the Artisan Collaborative.
The new program, which launched this week and will run through December 2024, will invest in rural artists to help them develop and bring to market new PA Wilds branded products to meet growing consumer demand.
Professional Juried Artists in the Wilds Cooperative of PA (WCO) network who specialize in visual arts and graphic design are eligible to apply and will be selected through a competitive application process.
Four artists will be accepted into the pilot, where they will be paired up to a rural manufacturer or producer and collaborate with that company and the non-profit PA Wilds Center to develop and bring to market new consumer products that align with the PA Wilds brand values.
The artists will be paid for their designs, and have professional development opportunities, including marketing, expanding their business-to-business network, access to new markets and referrals to resources to help them continue to scale their businesses beyond the scope of the project.
Participating artists will be paid $5,000 each for their designs, and receive $1,000 in professional development support.
The center will also cover $10,000 in start-up inventory from each manufacturer for the new product lines, support third-party distribution logistics and invest $6,000 in marketing the products and partnerships behind them.
All told, each artisan-manufacturer partnership will see a $22,000 investment.
“We see this as a unique opportunity to work collaboratively with both local artisans and manufacturers to bring new products to market that reflect this region’s beauty, bounty and rural traditions,” said Abbi Peters, PA Wilds Center’s Chief Operating Officer.
“This kind of collaboration can help establish a benchmark for how larger or more established companies active in our network can collaborate with cultural artists and newer entrepreneurs, and we hope it will lead to more creative end results while also being able to scale overall production.
“We are also excited about the investment in professional development as that can help creative entrepreneurs truly dive deeper into their businesses and become more sustainable and profitable, ultimately helping to build rooted local and regional wealth.”
Four established rural manufacturers or producers have partnered with the PA Wilds Center on the pilot project and will be paired up with the artists selected, including: Organic Climbing/Nittany Mountain Works in Centre County; St. Marys Box Company in Elk County; Xtreme Wear in Clearfield County and Laughing Owl Press in McKean County.
Products to be developed may include branded shipping boxes, stationary sets, coasters, cards, shirts, hats, hoodies, totes and bags and more.
“We love the PA Wilds Center’s mission and brand and doing collaborations like this,” said Organic Climbing/Nittany Mountain Works Owner Josh Helke, whose company makes climbing crashpads, backpacks, hip packs, bike bags and other gear from a solar-powered factory that sits atop of a former coal strip mine in Phillipsburg, shipping around the globe.
“The PA Wilds region is unique in the way it has all these incredible natural assets and public land,” Helke said, “but tucked within that are all these companies that still make things.
“That is really special in a time when so much manufacturing has moved overseas. We are thrilled to work with the PA Wilds Center and its partners to help elevate and celebrate that story, and to work with local creatives to bring some cool new products to market distinct to the PA Wilds region.”
The Artisan Collaborative is being launched with funding support from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Richard King Mellon Foundation, the U.S. Economic Development Administration and the Appalachian Regional Commission.
“The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (PCA) has a long and productive relationship with the PA Wilds Center and its nationally recognized leadership,” said Jamie Dunlap, chief of Creative Catalysts and Lifelong Learning at the PA Council on the Arts.
“Starting back in 2019 when the PCA supported the initial training and development program of the PA Wilds Cooperative, we have seen the value and impact of the work they are doing to support rural makers and entrepreneurs.
“We see this expansion of their ecosystem development as an adaptable model that can be replicated to support creative entrepreneurs in other rural regions in Pennsylvania.”
The Artisan Collaborative is one of several social impact investment offerings that has spun out of the center’s growing entrepreneurial ecosystem, which supports rural small businesses involved in the region’s tourism and outdoor recreation sectors through professional development, referrals to other service providers, commerce platforms to reach new markets, marketing and branding, and other tools and networks.
The ecosystem is tied to a 20-year collaborative effort to grow the region’s nature tourism industry as a way to diversify rural economies, attract investment, inspire stewardship, improve quality of life and retain population. Local, state and federal partners from the public and private sectors are involved in the regional strategy.
As part of its ecosystem, the center operates three physical mission-driven PA Wilds Conservation Shop gift stores in the region, which focus on selling locally-made products from rural PA, and an online marketplace, ShopthePAwilds.com, that does the same.
Through just this commerce platform, the center says, it can see there is consumer demand for more locally-made, PA Wilds branded products.
The Artisan Collaborative will begin to help address this market gap. Artists accepted into the program will also be able to sell their products through their own channels.
Peters said the hope is to expand the pilot in coming years and to include other types of artisans, manufacturers and products.
Visual artists and graphic designers interested in learning more about the 2024 Artisan Collaborative can visit WildsCoPA.org/artisan-collaborative to learn more and apply by Aug.16.