We were lucky to catch up with Vanessa Borg recently and have shared our conversation below.

Vanessa, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

I’ve been “producing” shows, events, etc. since I was a kid but debated all through high school if pursuing the arts in a professional capacity would be realistic. I worried constantly that I wouldn’t be good enough to make it, that I didn’t have any professional contacts in the art industry who would be able to help me. The breaking point came just before my senior year of high school when I did a community theatre production of the musical Chicago. Our director was very eccentric and utilized some unconventional methods – but they worked! Our cast learned a lot and had an amazing time bringing the production to life in a very real way. It was at that point that I realized if I really wanted a career in the arts, I’d be able to find a way to make it happen. Passion is the most important thing when it comes to pursuing art as a career – and it can’t be taught. I realized perfection didn’t have to be the goal, I would be able to rely on tenacity, hard work, and vision to chart my own path in the world of the arts.

Vanessa, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My background is in Theatre Performance, but I received my degree from a liberal arts school and had the opportunity to gain experience not just in dance, acting, and vocal performance – but also in stage management, lighting and scenic design, costuming, directing, writing, and arts administration. I loved the opportunity to dabble in lots of different aspects of the industry and gain an understanding of it from all angles.

Instead of delving into auditioning and job applications after school I ended up giving birth to my daughter. Auditioning is hard enough to wrap your mind around as a single person, but with a young child there was no way I was about to sign us both up for that lifestyle. Instead I ended up starting my career as a community organizer working on a state level advocating for affordability issues, in particular Paid Family Medical Leave and more affordable medications. This was a great way to get to know my community more and really become an active part of it. One thing that I began to realize – the lack of accessible community arts opportunities in my immediate town.

This led to the decision between my husband and I to use our savings to open up an arts and crafts business, CRAFT, in our historic downtown community. We sell arts and crafts supplies retail but also specialize in craft kits that have everything you need to complete a project included. People are welcome to use our space as a “craft cafe” during business hours, where they can order a project to complete in our shop. We have activities for all ages, so it’s fun to see entire families come in together and everyone finds something they can have fun working on. We’re able to use our walls as gallery space to host local artists’ work, offer our space to local artists and crafters to host workshops for rates they can afford, partner with nonprofits who need meeting space, and we designed our space to be flexible so that after-hours we can move out the furniture to host listening room concerts and play readings. We’re in the process of creating a local arts collective with other community arts producers as well, one of whom has a performance space we will begin using for small shows, so we can assist each other in building up the local art scene into something truly vibrant. I love that with this business model I get to pursue my own art, uplift other creatives, as well as add positivity to my community – we’ve had so many people walk into our shop and say “this is exactly what we needed!” which is amazing to hear.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I think the most important lesson I’ve un-learned is the myth of waiting for good things to come to you. As a younger person I definitely had people tell me, in a well-meaning way, that if I really put in the work and acted professionally in time I would find my hard work rewarded. But in practice I knew things would be more complex than that, that some folks work hard for decades and still never quite “make it”.

My senior year of college we had a thesis class all theatre majors needed to take before graduating, in it we went to NYC over spring break and saw 16 different on- and off- Broadway shows. We were also tasked with setting up at least 5 interviews with theatre professionals in whatever field it was we wanted to go into. I already knew at that point that I wanted to start my own company one day, but the idea of getting five interviews with founders of theatre companies was daunting.

To start a theatre company in the biggest city in the world for that industry is a huge deal, let alone start one that becomes successful and award-winning….I knew that these were people whose time was in high demand and doubted they would want to take time out of their schedules to be asked a bunch of questions over coffee by a 21-year old. To my surprise, I emailed 17 different theatre company founders, artistic directors, and managers and received responses from 13. This was a turning point for me – when I realized that actually, you can ask almost anyone in the world for almost anything and the worst that could happen is you get a “no” or no response at all.

This was a hugely important thing to realize – that sometimes, just asking for what you want can be enough to make it happen. It started with me landing some interviews with people who are legitimate creative geniuses, whose work inspires me – and who said I was asking all of the right questions to someday travel down a similar path myself. And it’s resulted in me being able to make fantastic connections with local art creators now, for the betterment of my own business as well as theirs. Now I can say that some of the most rewarding creative projects I’ve ever had the chance to work on have been projects that were an idea I found the courage to speak out loud, that became possible because other people heard what I was saying and responded. I don’t have the patience anymore to wait for opportunities to come to me, now that I know I can make them instead.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

I think a more affordable life in general is the number one thing that would best support artists, creatives, and creative ecosystems. It’s so difficult to get by now, especially with the extremely high cost of rent and other necessities in the cities where artistic jobs are most common. If we had single-payer healthcare and some kind of universal basic income that would go a huge way towards ensuring that those in the arts are able to get by. There are so many people who are extremely talented but need to work two or more jobs just to survive – there’s nothing left to give to the art after you’ve exhausted yourself that way.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.craft-leesburg.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/craft.leesburg/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CRAFT.leesburg

Image Credits

Headshot: Becky Gardner