Today we’d like to introduce you to Kayenecha Daugherty.
Hi Kayenecha, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
My 20 years of experience designing entertainment + experiential events and connecting artists and brands with interested audiences started officially in college at Morgan State University. In the music industry, I began as one of the first Hidden Beach Recordings interns who promoted the first Jill Scott and Kindred The Family Soul albums and other projects.
While interning at a company called VMG, I learned the ins and outs of event production, hospitality management, stage management, and the art of social currency. I went on to found my own entertainment company Gypsy Soul around 2006 and helped to provide exposure to emerging artists through media and events. Thanks to partnerships with folks like Jay Stewart we worked with some major folks including Melanie Fiona – who shared her album release of The Bridge with us at Teavolve after getting her nails done with students at Morgan State University earlier in the day. We worked to host The Foreign Exchange in Baltimore for the first time and helped to build the audiences of musicians like PJ Morton, Yuna, Jesse Boykins, and many more. Through additional partnerships with emerging booking giants like Anshia (Tull) Crooms of Briclyn Entertainment and through working relationships and involvement with entities like The Fader’s FARM TEAM, Gypsy Soul was able to help expand the audiences of as many as 30 great music makers. Over time I have built relationships and communities that are priceless. I worked at the DC Grammy Chapter for 6 years and then launched Creative Nomads in 2015. Educating both professionals and youth through arts and music has evolved as my professional passion.
Advocating for arts professionals and providing engagement to youth families and community members through art has my undivided attention. I believe completely that emerging arts professionals without professional development and access to successful peers are less likely to fully realize their potential.
I am acutely aware that youth who have little to no access to arts, music, cultural programming, and wellness tools are deprived of discovering their vast capabilities to imagine and manifest their dreams or thrive abundantly in today’s society. Art is too important to not support on a professional or youth level. I also am adamant that art can and should be used as a community and relationship-building tool to strengthen neighborhoods and cities.
My goal and the goal of Creative Nomads is to provide more educational resources to both arts professionals and youth in fun ways, grow family and community cohesion, increase cultural continuity, and promote positive personal identity growth for all involved. I hope that affluent community members who know the power of art discover Creative Nomads, invest in our mission, and help us to increase our impact.
In 2019, I was a Baltimore Homecoming Hero and also named to The Kennedy Center’s inaugural Culture Caucus where I provided opportunities for Baltimore-based artists to take the stage. I became a member of the 2023 class of The Leadership Baltimore and recently I was named a 2023 Baltimore Magazine GameChanger.
Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Being a Black woman Executive Director of a nonprofit is a challenge in itself. Additionally, leading a growing nonprofit with few resources creates a gap in the capacity that really can only be filled by revenue, and when you don’t have much capacity it’s hard to do the footwork to fundraise and relationship build.
Also, you don’t know what you don’t know. Running a nonprofit has been a learning curve that I’m still working to navigate. Being able to lean on and brainstorm with other Black leaders and women leaders who experience some of the same challenges I have had and am having helps a lot.
Seeing the impact on youth, families, and community members is motivation to keep pushing, at the same time, a healthy donation of $1M would allow us to elevate the art experiences for those we encounter to another level of self and communal transformation.
As you know, we’re big fans of Creative Nomads. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Creative Nomads is a growing nonprofit established in 2015. Our youth and family program, Where Art Starts, has serviced students and families through engaging, creativity-centered programs brought onsite to over 30 schools and community centers/sites where arts education is needed most.
Currently, we have engaged over 5,000 students and over 300 parents through direct service in collaboration with our academic partners in fun, unique, educational, and therapeutic ways. We believe strongly that access to art is extremely important to every community member regardless of barriers like income or geographic location.
We know firsthand how art can be used as a community and relationship-building tool for neighbors and families. Our Where Art Starts programs provide an outlet for youth and families to have fun, engage in stimulating arts education, find creative ways to let off steam, and grow neighborhood bonds through art.
Some of our most popular programs are Drumming With Dad, Mindfulness With Mom, and Community Paint. We have several other programs that center on arts and culture for participants.
Comrades in Arts is our programming for arts professionals that provides encounters that enable participants to sharpen their craft, elevate their careers, and learn techniques that allow them to better navigate the arts industry. Through designed experiences of peer-to-peer learning encounters and quality colleague connections, Creative Nomads builds programs for arts professionals intended to provide creative skill-building opportunities and enhance and sharpen their professional development for continued growth and success in their careers and the creative workforce.
We believe that the reality of success is more valuable than the illusion of fame and because of that, we equip our community of arts professionals, our Comrades In Arts, with learning experiences presented by successful, established artists in spaces that cultivate growth, learning, connecting, and ah ha moments that change creative careers.
We are proud to advocate and support art and the arts for both the artist and the audience. Our goal is to humanize art and provide access to art to all humans.
So maybe we end by discussing what matters most to you and why.
What matters most to me is access to art for EVERYONE in the community and access to resources for the artists.
Art is the universal expression of our souls and is powerful enough to influence the course of our lives. Art, music, and culture are tools used to build an appreciation of one’s humanity and the humanity of others. These tools are not a luxury for some, they are a right for all to be enriched by, engaged with, and enjoyed. Creative Nomads is committed to providing access to art for all.
Art is so essential to humanity and everyone deserves to be able to navigate this world with the tools, relief, and benefits that art provides.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thecreativenomads.org
- Instagram: instagram.com/creative_nomads
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ArtsOverEverything/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/creativenomadsltd
