By Joe Vickrey
Excited to gather again with friends and creatives alike, I drove down to 3hive to attend the monthly Provo Music Town Hall. For anyone who hasn’t seen or attended yet, this is a free and public meeting to discuss how we can help lift our music scene, and it’s a very cool way to meet new folks in the scene. It also usually ends up with me buying myself a record as a reward for socializing.
The evening started out with a relatively thin crowd, but for good reason! People of Provo Against ICE was a community dinner event happening at the same time, and while I personally couldn’t eat dinner at the late hour of 7 PM, I think everyone in attendance was happy to share the evening with St. Mary’s Church who hosted the event. As the evening went on, the crowd certainly filled out. The crowd was also filled… because of the dinner. With that event in mind, this Town Hall was intentionally meant to be a bit more lowkey.
For the first order of business, provmusicscene.com has been working with a designer to help get the site looking pretty. Darcie asked if she could get some feedback to share with the designer on how inviting it looks. Follow this link to help give your input for design and functionality. The site is still welcoming all members of the community to add events to the calendar and for artists to add a bio to the site.
Second up was an exciting piece of news from Owen Noble. Owen has been working with local businesses to make a community Google Maps that will show all of the places in downtown Provo where you’re allowed to hang posters. He said he’ll have a link ready by next month’s meeting, and it will be able to have other locations added by anyone who knows of supportive businesses willing to house flyers.
For the next topic, Jennifer was looking for ways to help our creative community have more engagement. The Provo Music Scene Discord has over 110 members currently, but has been light on discussion lately. A few people chimed in that they thought having a subreddit might be more familiar than Discord, and having both available might bring more conversation to the table for the community so expect a subreddit link coming soon! If you have any ideas you’d like to share to help grow the local creative community chat, then feel free to drop those ideas in the chat over at the Discord or reach out to provomusicscenetownhall@gmail.com in the meantime!
There were also several Provo Pro Tips shared through the evening that stemmed from the discussions that I’ll now share – with zero continuity to the previous topics:
Pro Tip 1: UVU’s Library Copy Center is hands down the cheapest place to get posters / zines printed. If you’ve ever admired an ABG’s poster, then you already know the quality of their work! Here’s a map to the Copy Center:
Pro Tip 2: Using Eventbrite and Facebook Events can help advertise your show to a wider audience than your usual sphere of influence.
Pro Tip 3: Would you like help funding a project? A member of the Arts Council suggested to one of our regular attendees that rather than appealing to the city for money, you could – and I’m paraphrasing here – check the list of Covey Center Donors and poach them for your own nefarious purposes.
Next Month
As the discussion shifted, it spawned the topics for next month’s meeting. Next meeting will be a show-and-tell style QR code share event dubbed the “QR Quilting Bee.” Come and bring a QR code for your project, whether you’re a musician, graphic designer, local business owner, or anything else. Come ready to share a small pitch about what you do and get inundated with follows!
No QR code? No problem! Provo’s own Ram Kalo is also planning on presenting easy ways to design QR codes and landing pages for your project so you can have options beyond things like Linktree. My guess is that most people reading this are creatives who want to focus on their craft and aren’t necessarily business majors, so this could be an excellent opportunity to learn a piece of the promotional puzzle.
Conclusion
All in all, it was a great meeting. Personally, my favorite part of the evening was when a 3hive patron came in, asked if we were in a class, and after having the concept of Provo Music Town Hall explained to him, he said, “You should try to talking to Velour. They made the Neon Keys.”
Well said, random bystander. Well said.
Until next time, be good to yourselves and others, get ready for QR Code Making 101, Sharing Time, and listen to the Neon Keys (or “A Footstep Past” by KNXWN below!).