Dreamers, inventors, entrepreneurs, and auteurs often have big ideas but lack the means to make them a reality. That’s why Jacob Tell, CEO of creative marketing agency Oniracom, helped to found Solutions for Dreamers (SFD), a mixer for creatively minded entrepreneurs and businesspeople and business-minded creatives, artists, and musicians.
SFD will hold its second event Friday, September 18, at 5 p.m. with event sponsors PlayBack Studios at Oniracom (720 E. Haley St.; oniracom.com), and Tell hopes this month’s meeting will make a roar. Featuring brand-new tiger-themed artwork from Tiger Heroes artist and entrepreneur Matthew McAvene (the man behind Blind Tiger’s namesake glowing-eyed cat) and music from the Dylan Ortega Band and the Jonathan McEuen Trio, the night will go toward funding tiger conservation through the World Wildlife Fund and Panthera.
McAvene, with his activist artistry and civic-minded creativity, was a natural partner for the mixer, Tell said. “We really feel that people respond, especially in this day and age of technology, with visual works of beauty and fine art that are on a large scale,” he said.
Dylan Ortega, the golden-voiced, country-singing teen from Buellton who was a recent finalist on Teen Star Santa Barbara, will be joined by a band at the SFD event on the heels of a busy summer schedule. Jonathan McEuen, meanwhile, is one of Santa Barbara’s top bluegrass performers, being among the few to claim genetic roots to the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and possessing impressive string-plucking skills himself.
Tell hopes the event will facilitate a wider creative connectivity in town and reinject some health into a creative community that has undergone its share of “ebbs and flows.” He feels the Funk Zone has pushed out the availability of cheap and more accessible arts spaces for higher-rent boutiques, and he hopes this event will bridge the gap between creative minds and the funds or stakeholders they often seek.
Event partners also include the Impact Hub, a new State Street workspace and idea-sharing venue. Pure Order will provide craft beers, and there will also be a food truck and a s’mores fire pit. Ortega and McEuen’s music will provide a fine melodic backdrop to the pulse of area innovators thinking and connecting to the beat of their own drums.