Art and business combine in coworking art gallery

Des Moines, Iowa - Impromptu Studio, a membership-based coworking community in downtown Des Moines, will house a salon-style art gallery featuring work from members of Market Street Media Foundry beginning in June.

MSMF member Cat Rocketship – recently named Best Artist in Cityview’s Best of Des Moines reader survey – will be curating the exhibits. Work will be updated every other month and feature an assortment of pieces from MSMF members.

“We’re really excited to be able to share this space with our friends at Market Street,” said Daniel Shipton, founder of Impromptu Studio. “Their business and our business are different sides of the same coin. I hope that the entreprenuers and professionals working at Impromptu find inspiration for their projects in this gallery.”

Market Street Media Foundry (MSMF) is a collaborative art and media studio located in Des Moines’ downtown Market District just south of Court Avenue on East 4th. Members of MSMF include photographers, painters, textile artists, video editors and other creative entreprenuers.

Scott Kubie, co-owner of MSMF, said that he is excited to offer this benefit to their members. “Unless you want to rent your own space or deal with the same stale crowds, there aren’t a lot of options to get your work on display in Des Moines. Impromptu attracts a uniquely connected crowd and wil be a great outlet for our artists.”

The MSMF gallery at Impromptu will only occupy a portion of their available wall space, leaving the coworking space free to host larger exhibitions for individual artists.

Artists interested in participating in MSMF are encouraged to visit http://www.marketstreetmediafoundry.com or contact Kubie at scott@therevuecreative.com.

Visitors are always welcome at Impromptu Studio and coworking plans start at $25 a month. Impromptu is located at 300 Southwest 5th Street.

Websites: Market Street Media Foundry – http://www.marketstreetmediafoundry.com
Impromptu Studio – http://www.impromptustudio.com

Wednesday March 25th, Impromptu Studio held a town hall meeting inviting the community to join our discussion about the future of Impromptu Studio.

Andy Brudtkuhl, 48Web and Doug Mitchell, CreateWow media talked about how they use the space, their current projects, and the opportunities that have been presented to them by working from Impromptu Studio.

Nathan Wright, Lava Row, spoke a little bit about SXSW and announced that he and several others that attended SXSW will be putting on a presentation to share with us all the fantastic new things he learned while there. He also talked a little about the WhatNow? Lunch and Learns that he and Andy Brudtkuhl have been putting on and how nice it is that we are around to use as a location for all of the cool events and presentations that he has been able to put on.

Dan also wanted to show that we are not the only space in the area that is around trying to make Central Iowa a better place. So we had Brian Anderson of Ames CoLab speak to us a little about the coworking space that they are opening in Ames and how we plan to work together to offer member reciprocity for both spaces. Scott Kubie of Market Street Media Foundry also got up and spoke about their new space which specifically caters more to Artists and and creative media fields.

Dan announced a few of Impromptu Studio’s membership goals and a membership drive, which he asked the community to help us with. With those goal Dan announced an event series that he would like to get started entitled cultivate:dsm which as we meet our goals we will begin implementing.

We will be talking more about these items in separate blog posts to cover them more in depth. We hope everyone who attended our town hall had a great time. There are some great things happening at Impromptu Studio we want all of you to be a part of it. Stay Tuned . . . .

Thoughts from Daniel Shipton of Impromptu Studio and Redship Technologies

I personally was quite inspired when the discussion ceased.  Venture capitalists seemed quite eager to reach out and engage young entrepreneurs. The VC’s were genuinely interested in forging real relationships with those around the table. That was the biggest take-away for myself. However….

At the meeting there were several people that had shown up with the sentiment ” I have a great idea, you should give me money.”  Realistically, this is not how the world of VC works. We need to work together with Iowa leaders to build a community that supports young business and recognizes the type of idea that, when given funding, will really take off. We need to not be so caught up in thinking about what that money would mean to our business if . We also feel that VC’s will not be the central solution to the brain drain. There are many other factors involved with making Des Moines a thriving community. We’ve attached a few others opinions of the meeting.

What do you think?

Thoughts from Scott Kubie of Rock Iowa

A caveat: To me, the technical definition of Brain Drain – a net loss of skilled or educated young people – is not as important to me as the loss of some of those young people in particular – the artists, the musicians, the cultural entrepreneurs- the creative class people that can make Des Moines a pretty kickin’ place to live. Boring yuppies who would never buy art or go to a show moving out of the state doesn’t really tug at my heartstrings. –

The recent Brain Drain roundtable at Impromptu was revealing, though in my opinion not particularly helpful. Conversation is rarely a bad thing, but can be when it is not followed by action. As a member of the “creative class” and veteran of the DSM non-profit cultural “scene”, I’m no stranger to conversations about the brain drain. Conversations, and more conversations, and more conversations. What many at the table at Impromptu revealed is that they are not particularly interested in addressing the problem at hand, but rather the problems in their hands. Me, me, me. How do I get money for MY business? How do I become successful? Why isn’t anyone helping ME? I’d rather resist cliche, but you all know the JFK quote that comes to mind.
I wish Des Moines’ technology entrepreneurs all the best of luck. I really do. However, trying to build “the next Google” in Des Moines is hardly a basket worth putting any eggs into. Are we incapable of having a strong, culturally diverse community without birthing the next Web 2.0 wonder in our own backyard? I should hope not. Funding tech start-ups and reversing the Brain Drain are both important problems, but in my opinion not all that connected. Getting real businesses here that need to employ real people at real, competitive wages will go a lot farther.

My first comment at the Roundtable was that the Generation Iowa report seemed accurate, but, again, hardly useful.Young people like good paying jobs and not having giant student loan debts? Stop the presses.

I think the impasse our community is at right now is that not a lot of people are willing to work in the middle on this issue. On one side, you have snotty 20 and 30-somethings who already have good jobs and money to burn that bellyache non-stop about how terrible Des Moines is, how there’s nothing to do, how much the nightlife sucks, etc etc. On the other side, you have advocacy organizations and people in positions of power sugarcoating everything and blathering non-stop about what an amazing community this is for art and culture, how the next creative-class revolution is already happening here, how easy it is to be an artist or musician in Des Moines, etc. And then, somewhere in the middle, you have the reality of the situation. There are some good things happening in Des Moines, but there are some major, major problems as well. There are too many excuses being made on both sides. The “everything sucks” crowd is apparently illiterate, as I rarely seem to have trouble finding an interesting band to check out or art exhibit to peruse on any given night of the week. The “we’re doing just fine” crowd has apparently never spoken to an actual artist or musician or someone else trying to make a living as a cultural entrepreneur. I’m working on a collaborative art studio right now and am running into plenty of artists that can’t even afford $100 a month for studio space.

Here’s my short version: put up or shut up. There’s a lot of work to be done. Bellyaching isn’t work. Stating the obvious isn’t work. Spending money to do reports based on 2000 census data that state the obvious isn’t work. Grant-supported cultural events that support bad art or dead genres of music isn’t work. “Advocacy days” isn’t work. There’s too much hand-holding and
too much back-slapping and not enough impassioned, aggressive cultural development.