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Arts Street Entrepreneurs Launch Incubator December 19
Incubator at 909 S. Santa Fe Launch Reception 6-9 p.m. Friday, Dec. 19, 2008

DENVER -- There’s one Catch-22 everyone knows: You can’t get a job without experience, and there’s no way to get experience without a job.

ARTS STREET’s many programs, volunteers and funders wrangle angles to find creative ways to get experience and opportunities for greenhorns everyday. On Dec. 19, the nonprofit will launch the Art Street Incubator at 909 Santa Fe St. in Denver.

This coincides with the Third Fridays gallery event from 6:00 – 9:00 p.m. and the holiday Luminaries Festival in the Santa Fe Art District. Featured during this event will be the first wave of Incubator inductees: Estevan Ruiz, Kristal Simmons, Jessica Trevizo and 2Kool.

Arts Street Incubator will share space at the Access Gallery of Very Special Arts Colorado ( www.vsaco.org ). VSA serves visual artists with disabilities.

For the use of both VSA and ARTS STREET, students have built a professional video production and editing studio at the Santa Fe location. The two groups will share studio and exhibition space, as well. The collaboration creates an affordable rent for the project, and helps VSA make more efficient use of its resources.

Inside this creative storefront, the Arts Street Incubator project will market the skills of trainees in the Video Informatics Program at ARTS STREET, which includes video and web services. Soon, the incubator will also offer the services of students trained in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the third component of the Visual Informatics program. 

The Incubator is a place where employers or business people can come to hire entrepreneurs or find potential employees. Businesses will find affordable services and the students will gain valuable experience.

This creative formula is a direct response to the mission of ARTS STREET and major funders like the U.S. Department of Labor WIRED grants that strongly value putting its trainees into work situations. The Metro Denver WIRED Initiative (Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development) funds the Visual Informatics program.

ARTS STREET and its media communications entrepreneurs invite community members to come in and see what’s developing at the Arts Street Incubator, Dec. 19. Just four blocks from the light rail at 10th and Osage, the Incubator is easily reached by bus as well.