What is CreativeMornings?
CreativeMornings is a free monthly breakfast lecture series designed for creative thinkers, makers, and enthusiasts. With chapters in 224 cities across 67 countries, it’s the world’s largest face-to-face creative community. Every month, each chapter selects a local speaker to give a talk on that month’s theme. Each event provides a space for volunteers and attendees to replenish themselves creatively with inspiring messages, new ideas, and meaningful connections.
CreativeMornings and a Global Pandemic
I started volunteering with CreativeMornings RDU in the winter of 2021. At that point in the pandemic, all CreativeMornings events had been held virtually for almost a year. Attendance had seen a dramatic decrease globally, and some chapters had stopped hosting events altogether. Raleigh’s chapter was still hosting events consistently but saw their numbers fall as well.
Promo Videos | Speaker Interviews
With my video editing and motion design experience, I thought I could help create some engaging content to promote the virtual events. I decided to conduct 30-minute recorded zoom interviews with the speakers a few weeks before their talk. I then cut what I found to be the most intriguing parts of that interview, sequenced them with energetic music, and emphasized memorable quotes and themes with supplemental graphics. Most of my interviews have resulted in a 45-second teaser video designed for social media stories and posts. The teasers are designed to build intrigue and direct the viewer to event registration.
final videos and speaker bios
After editing down the interview footage and capturing the speakers’ most captivating talking points, I could write a two-page article with all the information I’ve taken in. But for time sake and social media brevity, I write short bios for CM RDU’s Instagram that also serve as our speaker introductions during the event.
Here are some of my favorite promo videos and speaker bios to date:
David Menconi | PROCRASTINATE
David Menconi is an award-winning music journalist and the 2019 Piedmont Laureate. He spent 34 years writing about music for daily newspapers, 28 of which were at the Raleigh News & Observer. Recognized nationally, he’s written articles for Billboard, Rolling Stone, New York Times, and Spin and has published four books. He’s currently wrapping up a tour for his most recent book, “Step It Up and Go: The Story of North Carolina Popular Music, from Blind Boy Fuller and Doc Watson to Nina Simone and Superchunk” (2020, University of North Carolina Press).
Read David’s reflections on the talk here.
VIDEOS
The event promotion consisted of one 15-sec registration push along with a series of four 45-sec Q&A segments. A different Q & A video was posted each day on Instagram stories and posts during the week of the event.
Eyes Up Here Comedy flips the script on the longstanding boys club of comedy, handing the mic to comics who are otherwise overlooked. Creating more room for marginalized voices in comedy, Eyes Up Here Comedy runs the premiere women-only open mic show in North Carolina: Everybody But You, Bro (EBYB).
Erin Terry | RESILIENCE
Erin Terry is a standup comic based in Raleigh, N.C. whose collective, “Eyes Up Here Comedy,” produces shows featuring the region’s best standup comics—who just happen to be women. Erin is also co-producer of the annual Women in Comedy Festival in Boston. In 2018, Erin received an Indy Arts Award by INDY Week for her work with women in comedy in the Triangle.
THE VIDEO
I kept the interview questions very open-ended, knowing that Erin loves to talk and is a natural entertainer. She was great at articulating her overall mission and the big picture, which made it easy to find a throughline for the short video. She recalled often asking "Where are the women?" when first entering the Raleigh comedy scene and explained that it's a question that still fuels her today.
Courtney Napier | MATRIARCHY
Courtney Napier is a writer, journalist, gatherer, and antiracism coach from Raleigh, North Carolina. She has written for national outlets like NewsOne and The Appeal, as well as regional and local publications such as Scalawag Magazine, WALTER Magazine, The Carolinian, and INDY Week. She is also the founder of Black Oak Society, a collective of Black creatives in the greater Raleigh area. Their flagship publication, BOS Magazine, is a literary magazine focused on “giving Black Raleigh her flowers now.” Courtney has coached individuals and organizations as they seek to lead and live in a way that undermines white supremacy and honors the humanity of all people.
THE VIDEO
Courtney had many beautiful, poignant answers to my questions, but when I asked her to answer the same questions as if she was talking to her daughter, the interview really came together to create something that was moving, tender, and hopeful. Since she’s a writer and such an eloquent speaker, I wanted to highlight her words with dynamic typography.