We were lucky to catch up with Jules Downum recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jules, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

Oh man. It’s hard to pick ONE meaningful project. There have been so many and they are meaningful for different reasons.

I think I can focus in on two. One is the project we are working on now – it’s an immersive event series being held in the historic Coosa Mill in the fall of 2022. The other is the feature length film we created in 2020, title “The Light We Share,” which is premiering at the Nashville Film Festival in October 2022.

To understand the full meaning of these project for us you have to know a little of our backstory. We chartered in 2016 with the mission to build the arts economy in our area in a way that focused on fair wages for artists.

In early 2020, we received some substantial investment to open a temporary immersive arts attraction as a proof of concept. If able to demonstrate it’s financial stability, there was a promise of future investment to make this a permanent thing! It would have meant living wages for many artists including dancers.

We secured the final grant funding in February 2020. We all know what happened in March 2020.

When we realized it would be a while before public gatherings resumed, and saw how devastating the pandemic was to performing artists, we knew we had to do something with the funding. And, so, we decided to create a feature length film that told the stories from 7 of our dance company members’ lives. The result is a beautiful dance film that has a visual album feel, but that encourages curiosity and empathy.

We held a showing for our community in Jan 2022 to a sold out crowd of nearly 1000. As mentioned, it is making a public debut at the Nashville Film Festival this fall, and we expect to distribute it next spring.

Our current project is an immersive event series in an old fabric mill. We have been commissioned for this project as a way to create placemaking and help to animate the old building, which has been empty since 2003. Our event will take over 3 floors of the building, and tells the history of the space through dance, music, installations, project art, and more. “If These Walls Could Talk,” is a full sensory experience in which the audience can choose their own adventure!

It is also an extremely similar to the project we’d proposed in 2020! An opportunity we thought we had lost forever!

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

The Pop-up Project is best described as a non-profit production company. Our mission is to build a vibrant, diverse, and sustainable arts economy.

We have 3 main programs: Immersive events, year round youth programming, and a Pop-up Street team.

We absolutely love to create BIG, immersive productions that bring a lot of artists to the table while paying them fair wages, providing clear direction, and creative freedom! These kinds of events create all kinds of buzz and excitement, and drive audience attendance – so that they can be financially viable.

This kind of project serves many needs for different clients. We generally base the project on the history of the space or community and in that way it helps in placemaking efforts, animates forgotten about spaces, uncovers lost stories, and creates a lot of marketing content and buzz about a location.

In our youth programs we work with local schools, community centers, and non-profits to provide free dance and creative movement classes to hundreds of children a week all across the city! Our youth program director, Louie Marin-Howard has a passion for education and we believe that a lack of financial resources should never prevent a child from dancing! This important program is helping to create a more equitable art economy in our city by providing classes to those who may otherwise not have the opportunity.

We also work with many other individuals and event planners to curate or create entertainment experiences for their events. Our dancers (who come from many different styles) go to dozens of events every year and help entertain, tell stories, drive home meaning, or connect communities across difference. We pride ourselves on understanding the need and creating a custom performance to help connect the audience to the purpose.

I am one of the co-founders of the organization. We began Pop-up after moving back to the area, and seeing how limited the opportunities were for artists, and especially dancers in our area. We knew we had to get folks to see the value in art, how it can be/and is a service like any other business. We knew we had to build an audience for dance, showcase how much it could accomplish, and demonstrate how vital art is for the health of a community.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

I think many who are not artists for a living don’t really understand the amount of work it is to run an art based business! People generally assume I spend all day dancing around a studio….I WISH. That would be a dream.

However, an arts organization, like The Pop-up Project, requires the kind of work a small business does. There is a lot of business development and administration work; client communications; customer service; HR issues; grant applications and reporting; marketing and content creation…. the list goes on. All of that is necessary to make the creative work possible – yet it is rarely understood that artists, and arts organizations engage in all of that to survive.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

This one is easy: The community you end up with as a result.

Because of my role as a creative entrepreneur my community is full of creative, diverse, problem solvers. They are all interpreting, passionate, and doing amazing work in the world. Anytime I’m facing burnout and just want to quit my community of excellence really keeps me going.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thepopupproject.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepopupproject/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/popupprojectchattanooga

Image Credits
Image 1: Kelly Lacy Image 3 : Abigail Rice Image 2,4,5,6: Tim Cofield