Published in Her & Playgrounds Magazine.
After buying a loft downtown two years ago, my heart has grown tremendously for our community and our development. After selling my family’s tax business, I started booking/marketing for The Loft, CutBait Music Festival, and a lot of other projects/events for the past two years. During this time I realized the lack of synergy and coverage on cool things to do for Columbus, GA residents. Not just tourist ideas but what is the vibe in our city, what are the locals doing for fun and how are they receiving their information? For instance, I would book a band that would sell out in a bigger city, but here people didn’t know about them and/or didn’t want to publicize them. Pretty soon I realized we needed a media source for our culture while building our community.
I talked to Cora King first about my frustration and she has a similar heart for our town’s cultural evolution. We discussed our ideas, and found a lot of people with our vision for Columbus. After joining All Over the Valley, we eventually founded Electric City Life to facilitate our vision. “Electric City” was an old nickname for our town, being a symbol of resilience and unity for our town as we flourished through the Iron Mill, before it was branded as “Fountain City” in 1966.
We, Electric City Life, feel another cultural movement is upon us, to continue building and shaping the rapid revitalization and development occurring in our town. There is a vibrant, innovative group present, and emerging, who want to connect as an influential voice, conversing and engaging, while empowering our community to find its vibe.
We believe as we facilitate cultivation, discuss our lifestyles, share ideas for improvements, and highlight how amazing Columbus has become, we create more synergy. Our culture is an expression of us, created by our passion, creativity, and imagination. By welcoming diversity, we begin to possess distinctive character and rejuvenate our perceptions. To embody a thrilling, inspired lifestyle is quite appropriately, electric.
At this point I spearhead the volunteer group with our website, ElectricCityLife.Com, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Our website features several articles, from different authors, highlighting sub-cultures, restaurants, new businesses, insight for our community, and events, plus a calendar. Currently, we have a group of CSU students receiving credit for working on short documentaries, featuring local artists and musicians, to be released soon.
Humans of New York has inspired us with their photos and stories. We are developing a similar project of highlighting individual’s stories, and photographing them, in Columbus, GA. We are listening to what Columbus wants and needs while this continues to unfold. Electric City Life is a grassroots movement for our community, by our community, there are a lot of ways this could evolve. We will eventually have events, possibly go to print, produce more short videos and wherever else the innovated, creative communicators of Columbus want to lead us.
Written by Jacy Jenkins
