Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Annika Wines. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Annika, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

One of my most meaningful projects and the one nearest and dearest to my heart is SAVIfest. SAVIFest is an improv festival that brings people together from all over the world; its the largest improv festival in Arizona hosting three days of improv from the most talented people. I have been lucky to help bring it together with the founders for the last two years. I started as a volunteer host in it’s first year, helping introduce teams and helping coordinate other volunteers- small stuff. Then the next year, I became the fundraising coordinator, in charge of events, volunteers, and obviously securing funding. Seeing the growth between year one and year two required more funding to make it bigger and better. The project is 100% volunteer based, and our volunteers worked so hard to secure funding to make SAVIFest happen. And we are doing it again next year ;).

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am an Arizona native who has been in performance and community building spaces since high school. I started in musical theater in high school, thought I hated theater, but really discovered I just hated memorizing lines. Which is what brought me to improv! At the same time, I also started the first Gay Straight Alliance club (a staple of the 2000’s) and organized community gun violence walk-outs at my school. Later, I started performing with different improv troupes in college and have since been performing for five years. The Arizona improv community is so full of collaboration and inspiring creatives. Meeting so many amazing pillars of the community gave me so much, it made me want to give back and dust off my community organizing skills.

SAVIFest is an organization founded by three amazing mentors of mine. It is the biggest improv festival in Arizona and brings people from all over the world into the performance space. Since it’s infancy two years ago, I have been an organizer and volunteer within the festival space. Most recently, I coordinated with the other leadership to secure funding to support our educators and volunteers. We held events like Drag Me to Improv: a half drag half comedy show, Artist Silent Auction: a silent auction where our improv artists gifted their art to fund the festival, and Pay What You Can workshops and jams. Next year we are planning an ImPROM and much more!

I am currently working on honing my craft and establishing myself in the improv community in Los Angeles, making new connections and maintaining my Arizona ones. Everywhere I go, I believe that community development at the smallest level is the most important action to take everywhere I go. I hope to take that with me in my future career.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

In corporate America, to succeed you have to basically think you are the only one working on anything and that you are responsible for everything. A very “if you want it done right, do it yourself” mindset, except it’s very much a “if you want anything done at all, do it yourself.”

While there are some things that applies to, I found that the more you rely on others and collaborate in a creative space, the more opportunity to flourish. SAVIFest is 100% volunteer driven, and wrangling volunteers is very challenging because obviously there is no monetary incentive. While organizing my teams of volunteers, I definitely started with a tyranical, “do exactly this” approach, and found that it was not very successful. It was only when I actually started empowering the volunteers who were ready and willing to take change did anything actually get done.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Stop using AI for creative endeavors. And in your every day life. You have to do less critical thinking, creative thinking, or collaborating with others. Why would you want to do less of any of those things? Outsource your creative energies to other creatives, not artificial intelligence.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://savifest.com/
• Instagram: @annika.cw

Image Credits

Jennifer Giralo