We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Scott Woods. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Scott below.

Alright, Scott thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us 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.

My biggest personal and professional risk was building a cultural arts center from scratch.

It started as a lark. In February of 2016 I was giving a speech at a high school in my hometown, Columbus, Ohio, for Black History Month. I had been asked to speak on the history of Black art in Columbus. I took a slightly different route, and treated the occasion as a state of the union address, describing what life was like at that moment in the city for Black artists. Things were rough. While I knew and worked along many artists in various disciplines, you didn’t see us in most of the places where art was happening. We weren’t getting lots of gigs or exhibits, we weren’t getting grants or residencies, none of that. It was as if we didn’t exist.

One of the things I said in that speech was that one could book a whole month of Black artists every day straight with no repeats and each day would showcase a truly great talent. Of all the things I said that evening, that line stuck with me. Things finally came to a head in the fall of that year when I finally decided to make that statistic real. I set about planning a 31-day event series called “Holler”, in which every day of that month would feature a Black artist or group doing some creative act: music, dance, poetry, art…a smorgasbord of art. Several months later in March of 2017 I made that a reality. Holler was a huge success and literally made my city feel different. It changed the cultural landscape.

During the first week of that show I was approached by a gentlemen, Glen Kizer, who had been coming out to my poetry open mic for a couple of years at that point. I knew him, but not well. He was very taken with Holler’s success very early on. He asked me what it would take to do the work of Holler, but year-round. I jokingly responded, “Oh, I don’t know, Glen. A venue?” Unbeknownst to me, Glen was a very well-off lawyer with a very big heart who believed fiercely in community. He offered to buy a building and hand me the keys to do whatever I wanted in the space. Once I vetted him and his offer, I agreed to go for it. We spent about seven months looking for the right property, bought it outright, and spent another year and a half getting it day-one ready. We knew we’d only have one shot at a good first impression to the city. During that time I created a non-profit to run everything, Streetlight Guild, and I opened doors on our brick-and-mortar venue in the summer of 2019. We’ve been programming all manner of events there ever since.

The mission of Streetlight Guild is to create, nurture, refine and preserve original Columbus culture in its many forms, with an emphasis on historically excluded voices. We wanted to answer the question “What is Columbus culture?” 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.

I’m a working artist, specifically a writer, and have been producing events for almost three decades. I ran a poetry open mic for 24 years, and served on the executive council for a national poetry slam organization for a decade. Fortifying all of that experience into a local-specific venture was the next logical step for me. I’m cut from old blues juke joint cloth, meaning I believe in putting on a nice, tight good time that’s worth people traveling to experience. I create a space for artists to do the work they don’t feel comfortable doing in other places, so we get a lot of unique art happening in Streetlight Guild. I tell people I’m in the “moments business.” It’s my job to take cool ideas and bring them to life, ideas that may be challenging in places with lots of red tape or that have to answer to lots of shareholders. If you want your art exhibit to be modeled after your mother’s kitchen from 1975, I’ll put a lot of holes in a lot of walls to make that happen. If you want to see poetry on any given night in a month, we book that regularly.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

The mission of Streetlight Guild is to affix Columbus culture firmly in people’s minds. As a growing city, Columbus has to contend with lots of questions about its values and identity. Those are questions best answered by culture. It’s why art is always being sprinkled on top of city planning: arts are attractive. People switch cities to be around a happening arts scene. And while you can get away with a sprinkle for a little while, a city with a true pool of talent should be showcasing those artists as broadly as possible. I don’t make space for art for brochures; I make art that I hope changes people’s lives when they encounter it. That’s the kind of value-based work that can sustain an artist’s life.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Society can best support artists by treating it like a social and civic need, like health care and education. Arts and culture shouldn’t be seen as luxuries or rare things. We’re technically surrounded by art all of the time; we just don’t see it as art. So I say take the next step as a city (I think society-wide change is asking a lot) and invest in the arts, not because artists say so, but because art is where ideas and conversations happen first. If we treat the art like the social service it is, we’ll see sea changes in how people see, treat and communicate with one another.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.streetlightguild.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/streetlightguild/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StreetlightGuild
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@streetlightguild9459

Image Credits

Scott Woods