
We Connect: A Cultural Experience
Donation protected
Hello!
I want to take a moment to introduce myself. My name is Nikkia Riles, I am the owner and local photographer of Lollie13 Marketing and Photography based in Columbus, Ohio.
My passion is creating a world to take people on a journey. From the time I was a little girl creativity was a thing in my family's household. Everyone in my family had a talent for something. Music and art were very much surrounding me. When I got to college I knew what I wanted to do as an artist, but life as you know it happened. Things had changed and I had to adapt. Things got expensive and the dream of art fell by the west side. When COVID-19 hit and pretty much kept everyone in. I had that urge to create again. Photography captured my peak interest even though I had taken photography classes before. My husband still had his old camera and I just started tinkering with it. I was just doing it to keep myself busy and get my creative imagination out. The more I got involved in creating photos, the more I got into it and started my photography business. I practiced and practiced. I called friends and family just so I could build a portfolio. For 3 years of photographing, my pictures have grown. I continue to learn new and different trending things with photography in many different genres.
Even though art is my passion, culture is my passion as well. I loved seeing and hearing about different cultures in their traditional clothing, language and food. As I began learning different genres of photography, I noticed that there were not a lot of minorities in certain types of genres that represented cultures that many minorities can relate to. It bothered me. So I wanted to do something about it. I started a project called We Connect: A Cultural Experience Series where I would take people from different ethnic backgrounds and place them in their traditional clothing in an ethereal/fantasy genre. I wanted to bring more diversity into this type of style as well in the fashion/editorial world. I wanted to educate people and take them on a journey to other places about different cultures around us, getting to know cultures up close and personal, showcasing them in their traditional clothing, and talking about traditions and their culture that some may not know.
Not everyone can travel to other countries, but what if we could bring a country to our audiences that they could see with their family and friends and come away with that wow factor and feeling that they were transported to another world in their hometown? This is where we need your help to continue this project to showcase and educate about the cultural diversity around us. We want to share the beauty and richness of every culture that I hope people will be interested in and enjoy with friends and family. These funds will help to stretch this cultural project to new ideas to create even better compositions with funding for new equipment, gallery exhibitions, costumes, advertising and marketing material and to continue to learn different techniques of creating more inspirational art to reach a bigger audience. Preserving stories of our culture is important and we don't want them to die. This is my passion and my goal of wanting to accomplish. With your help, this can be possible. We want to be able to pass these amazing stories and traditions down to the next generation to seek out and explore. If we don’t invest in ourselves we will not be able to grow as a society.
Organizer
Nikkia Riles
Organizer
Columbus, OH