We recently connected with JerMarco Britton and have shared our conversation below.

JerMarco, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

The most meaningful project I have ever worked on was creating the obituary for my grandmother who recently passed away in June of this year. She had lived to be 90 years old and was a mother to not only the 13 children she gave birth to but she also was a motherly-figure to many in the neighborhood we grew up in.

While in the planning phase for her funeral, my family was delegating tasks and I volunteered to design the obituary because I thought it would be the best way for me to honor her with what I could do. I have only been seriously designing for a year as a personal practice but I just knew I did not want her obituary to look like anyone else’s and quite frankly not look good if designed by the funeral home that would just be following a standard template.

It took some time to complete but the obituary came out beautifully and I truly feel that it was representative of the woman she was and how my family and many others will always remember her.

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 background and context?

My name is JerMarco Britton, Founder & CEO of music community organization Soul Shed STL, and I currently reside in North City Saint Louis, MO. I can adamantly state that the work I do today is a result of taking part in many community programs as a young man that instilled in me the importance of taking the initiative to fulfill a need in your environment and partnering with others who also recognize that that need has to be met.

As a performance artist I’ve had the opportunity to tour the country and perform on stages both big and small, open up for major artists such as Chance The Rapper and Terence Blanchard and work for organizations like Jazz St. Louis & Save The Music Foundation that play a huge part in keeping the art of music alive.

In 2018, after returning to St. Louis from a short stint in New Orleans and recognizing the issues that musicians face in St. Louis due to there being an almost non-existent music industry here. I decided that I would begin an organization that would focus on establishing an infrastructure that allocates the resources for independent musicians to take charge of their careers and learn what it takes to make it sustainable and rewarding for them.

Our flagship program, Soul Shed University takes the model of higher education and takes musician through a 12-month artist development curriculum in which they take classes that focus on Music Education, Music Business, Music Performance and Wellness in an effort to make them as well rounded as possible as professionals and people. These classes are taught by professionals that are based in the community who have experienced personal success and now seek to impart the knowledge they’ve gained back to those who are pursuing a similar path thus making everyone’s individual path to success a communal effort.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I have a personal mission in life to forever be a student and thus I hope to always be able to encourage others around me to do the same. I am constantly learning new things both in and out of art and it is always a pleasant experience when I see how things I’m learning, that may be very different on the surface, intersect in some kind of way that allows me to find the baseline principles that power that very thing coming into being. It then becomes a little easier to learn new things when you recognize that everything has a starting point and once you learn what that foundation is you can explore more. I would say that this personal mission spurs a lot of my creativity because it is led by a genuine curiosity to discover more but also challenge myself to become greater.

Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

The jury is still out on that one but I’m wondering when the invention of food materialization is going to drop and if hot wings are going to be as good as the real thing.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.soulsheduniversity.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soulshedstl/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/soulshedstl
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jermarcobritton/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNsl97ixw0g7wd2UatVUWRw

Image Credits
Photo Credits: Andrea Griffin, Erica Jones, and Louis Wok.