Amanda Wells founded FLOW with a mission to " build strong communities by fostering meaningful writing and storytelling experiences.” Last summer, FLOW won the Arts and Education Council's (A&E) 2017 stARTup Competition, a partnership with the PNC Foundation, and moved into A&E's Centene Center for the Arts. We caught up with her to hear about her year after winning the stARTup Competition and what’s ahead for FLOW.

How did winning the 2017 stARTup Competition shape the growth of FLOW?

It took our ideas about what FLOW could be and put them into motion. I think it really helped clarify the mission and vision and how we were going to start to fit pieces together. The second piece of that is, the exposure and the support of the Arts and Education Council lent a credibility to the idea that we had to start all of this. That’s always helpful when you're in a startup position.

How have you seen the ripple effect of the arts during your last year in the Centene Center for the Arts?

We’ve been able to start bringing artists together of different media with writers and get them working in a way that a lot of people theorize about. Before, we didn’t really have a solid framework to do that in. People are learning from each other and that’s pushing out into the community. That’s been a really neat thing to watch.

What's on the horizon for FLOW?

We have adapted an online learning management system. We will be able to start organizing an online interactive community space for writers and other artists who want to have conversations and collaborative opportunities. There will be opportunities for writers to grab prompts and see what everybody else is doing. It’s a concentrated effort to work together in a way where people don’t have to leave their houses. Writers are often employed in other places. They have busy schedules and they work when they can. It allows us to set up opportunities for them to connect in a meaningful way.

We are also planning to carry on the Spark event for the third time in October. As people come to that event and see what we're doing, putting different artists in a room together and creating a generative energy, word is getting out about the effect of that on people's connections but also on their own work and how communal creative spaces function. It’s popular in New York, London, L.A., Chicago and now we have a space to do that. It is a lot of community building that we are looking forward to now. We need connectivity.

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For more infromation about FLOW, vist flowstl.com