Subject: Season's Greetings & Creator Labs!

Hey Friend,

Welcome to the holiday edition of the Creator Newsletter! We hope you find some joy this holiday season. But if you're struggling, come hang out with us on our new Twitch stream, and maybe the community can help ease the world for an hour or two.

In this edition: Creator Labs - our weekly creator collaboration and brainstorming sessions running on Twitch; a call to submit your creative gifts to our Holiday gift-list blog, wrapping hacks, nerdy holiday recipes, and free interactive fiction games.

Introducing Creator Labs!

Every Monday 4pm MST (Tues 9am AEST | Tues 10am AEDT) starting Dec 19

We get it, it can be hard to create in a vacuum. So every week we're going to be running Creator Labs - a one hour, weekly creator collaboration and brainstorming session on Twitch. Follow the channel now to get notifications when a session starts streaming live.

Have you got an idea for Story City you're not sure how to execute? Let's chat it though. Is it a slow stream day and you want to shoot-the-shit about story blocks in general? Heck let's do that too and just create together.

You can choose to tune in and just to hang with like-minded folks to get inspired, or sign up for your (free) Twitch account and hop into the stream with our lead producer, Emily Craven, and brainstorm on 'stage'. Just make sure you verify your account with a phone number so the Twitch system will allow us to send you a link to join us on the stream as a Guest Star.

See you there!

PD Resources & Opportunities

Taking Matters into Our Own Hands

As part of a Creative Mornings Field Trip this year we gave a 90min PD session on How to Bring Your City Back to Life to over 300 creators. Aimed at helping the arts take pandemic recovery into their own hands, it's full of case studies for everyone from storytellers, to musicians, to urbanists.

Check out the recording here.

Call For Holiday Gift List Submissions

Last year's Holiday Watchlist & Gift Guide was a hit so we're do it again this year! If you're a creator of things that would make a great last-minute gift, or make online video or audio content that would make great entertainment over the break, just reply to this email with the details!

Deadline is Wed 14th Dec.

Creator Spotlight – Filmmaker, Marven Likness

Writer, Aerial Cinematographer, and hard of hearing actor, Marven Likness, is an award-winning writer of biopics, and a sign language consultant for film. We're so proud of Marven for the recent launch of his Telus Storyhive Frame Forward episodes on the Future of Disability in Film and a Day in the life of a Drone Pilot.

Not only is Marven making waves in film in Alberta, he's responsible for Deaf Voice in a COVID World, a walk through Edmonton's downtown where you get to experience it like never before, from a deaf perspective (assuming you follow his suggestion to bring ear plugs!). Available now on the Story City app, just download the app and head over to La Marchard Mansion to start your walking tour. Or hit it up in Spoiler Mode from the comfort of your home. 

Random Things We Found That We Think You’ll Like 

This woman can wrap ANY gift 

No seriously, we’ve been diving into TikTok recently, and this woman can literally show you how to wrap anything. Check out her videos here.

Nerdy Holiday Recipes/food arts & crafts?

From Nerd's Wife blog come these adorable recipes slash decorating tricks that help you to turn a cheese wheel into a Santa suit, and a Slim Jim into a reindeer amongst other things. If you're looking to mix arts & crafts with food that requires little preparation, we got you!

Free Interactive Fiction Games

Every year IFcomp - the Interactive Fiction Competition - gathers storytellers and game makers from across the world to award the best in creative commons, interactive fiction. The rules? It can't have been previously released, and it must be available for FREE in their archive for anyone to play in the future. This year's winner was The Grown Up Detective Agency, which is just as fun as it sounds. You can check out, along with its companions here!

Your Questions, Answered!  

This week's question: Any paid opportunities coming up? 

I mean, you can now sell your stories on the Story City app at any time, which means you can start making money tomorrow if you like! Just sign up for a creator account, maybe use our Twitch brainstorming sessions every Monday, and off you go!

But if you mean via partnership projects, while we don't have any active ones this moment, we DO regularly aid creators in making grant submissions to create new, community works to local, state, or government bodies in your region. We have a grant funding success rate of over 40% (where the industry average is closer to 10%) and are happy to not only provide creator resources, but support letters, and wording used from previous winning grants to help you craft an application that will get the production funds you need to create and pay others to create with you.

We want to make sure creators can build multiple revenue streams and a career in their cities. And if this helps you get there, we're happy to lend a hand!

Wishing you a month full of adventures. Thank you for joining ours!

Warmly,

The Story City Team

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Subject: Season's Greetings & Creator Labs!

PD Resources & Opportunities

Creator Spotlight – Filmmaker, Marven Likness