We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Allyson West a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Allyson , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

I’ve been the Executive Director and founder of a non-profit since 2017. Our first year’s program was exclusively a film festival, and it was one of the most public, riskiest projects I’ve undertaken. To get started, I assembled a small team of passionate people and we started making decisions regarding dates and locations very quickly. Sometimes having a deadline is all it takes to get the process started!

We announced publicly with little foundational support and started raising awareness, funds, and organizing the logistics all at the same time. It honestly was very thrilling and incredibly fun – we invited over 200 filmmaking artists to our city and learned so much about grant work and business sponsorships along the way. Ultimately we fundraised over $70,000 in five months and hosted over 2,000 attendees over the course of a three-day event.

Do we work that way currently? Of course not. The benefits of starting something new is that there are lots of shortcuts and scrappy solutions you can engineer as needed. This entire program was a great way to provide growth and learning opportunities for everyone on the team – now we can look fondly back at that period of success and appreciate all the hard work we put into it.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Allyson West. I’m a professional filmmaker and producer/director, currently working full-time for the Kroger Co. in Cincinnati, Ohio. I’m a passionate mother raising two small children. I love freelancing and developing new creative concepts. I love public speaking and frequently teach masterclasses, speak on panels, host events or deliver speeches connected to empowerment and success.

Innovating forward is one of the most important steps in growing new opportunities – more of the “leap before you’re ready” concept. I spent so many years looking for jobs that I wasn’t quite qualified for; along the way I developed so many skills that have made me excellent at my work now. I started as an actress with a day-job, and have allowed myself to shift and grow creatively as my personal life has shifted and grown.

I’m currently in development on one feature film project as well as a book.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Consistency is everything in growing a network, audience, or clientele. It doesn’t matter the medium – if you are using social media, traditional media, newsletters, or in-person conversations – your consistency is what makes people stick around.

Ultimately, your consistency is a mark of your character – your ability to say what you mean and do what you say. Once you have matured enough within yourself to understand your own boundaries and limits, you are better able to show up consistently for those around you.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I didn’t see it coming. A global pandemic. One week I’m printing flyers for the summer, attending industry mixers, enthusiastically handing out Cindy sunglasses. The next week, I’m infathomably stuttering, weeping, and watching the arts organizations around Cincinnati shut down.

I called the Cindependent Board President on the phone. “We need to talk about this,” I said.

She broke it to me gently – the fact, the reality, that our funding and our festival plans were going to be irreparably impacted by the health guidelines in place for 2020. Three years of work – personal and professional – and countless opportunities of connection throughout the city vanished before my eyes.

I spent three weeks weeping. In the meantime, I prepared our materials. With a 5-week-old baby, a toddler, and a grieving community surrounding me – I updated financial projections, marketing plans, and prepared our postponement materials. It didn’t feel good.

The world continued on. I yearned to share cheer; I was inspired to provide happiness. I felt like I needed to do my part to encourage our community to enjoy small respites as they appeared. That’s when I realized what Cindependent had to do. We took a 10×6′ cargo trailer and transformed it into ‘Reels on Wheels,’ a mobile cinema, within the course of six weeks.

‘Reels on Wheels’ has the capacity to travel and park anywhere that can fit the trailer, thereby accessing zip codes in the city that may not have had the opportunity to access indie filmmaking in normal life, let alone during a pandemic. I spent my entire summer of 2020 driving this cinema all over our community, providing socially-distanced outdoor film screenings that were curated to inspire optimism and cheer.

Furthermore, the filmmakers in Cincinnati needed this. Cindependent was the cornerstone of our economic-building efforts that aimed to create livable wages for indie film artists in Cincinnati. We intentionally cultivated the community toward independent filmmaking, and intentionally built career opportunities for local storytellers to remain in Cincinnati.

‘Reels on Wheels’ kept the indie spirit alive throughout 2020 while providing a unique and meaningful way for our organization to contribute to society. I’m so proud of this pivot and all our team accomplished during the height of the pandemic.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.allysonwest.com
• Instagram: @allyson_the_instagreat

Image Credits
Katie Nartker of Bird and Rose Photography