My guest today is creative community builder, Kate Lesta.
Kate was brought up around art, theatre, and non-traditional education. Raised in both Boulder, Colorado and Ibiza, Spain, Kate followed a natural inclination towards creating intercultural expressions in order to build new platforms. Her artist cooperative that she commenced just at age 16 later evolved into event production work devoted to the intersection of digital technology, electronic music, immersive experience, and progressive mediums. She has executed hundreds of successful events, both large scale and local/private, over the course of the last fifteen years. The Communikey Festival, which Kate founded and directed, lead her to involvement with festival networks that span the globe. These include Decibel Festival, MUTEK Montreal, Club Transmediale Berlin, Unsound Krakow, and ICAS, to name a few. With a unique understanding of diplomacy, the music industry, and curation, Kate continues to facilitate sustainable systems, safe spaces, and interpersonal growth via community connectedness. She is well-versed in talent buying, budgeting, building code and compliance, US immigration bureaucracy, and pre-/post-production.
In this episode, you'll hear:
- Why Kate got involved in community
- The role empathy in Kate's work
- Kate's draw to creative community
- What Kate learned from CMKY
- How creative arts lead to personal transformation
- Kate's experience at Meow Wolf
- Kate's take on why Mutek has maintained it's integrity
- How franchise models can potentially scale creative projects
- What Kate learned from supporting the community affected by the 2016 Oakland warehouse fire
- Kate's advice for people who want to create creative community
