Let us start by making this assertion; Columbus, Ohio is an amazing city. There is a tremendous amount of talent in this city, particularly creative talent.
All in all, Columbus is credited with being the 17th largest city in the country, and the 4th largest capital city in the country, only coming in behind Phoenix, Indianapolis, and Austin. We are also located within 550 miles of half of the population of the United States. What this says to us here at “the hot 17″ is that Columbus has the power to affect national culture far more than we, it’s citizens, ever dreamed. And we think it’s time to start throwing our weight around.
As a city, we have an enormous creative collective. Through organizations and businesses such as The Wild Goose Creative, Junctionview Studios, the new Wonderland, and many others, the city is expressing it’s collective creativeness. The music scene in Columbus is starting to come into it’s own, with established bands like Two Cow Garage, Watershed, and Phantods leading the way for newer or lesser known bands like Way Yes and Low Men (and many, many others) to come in, hitting the ground running.
The surprising thing about all of this creativity that is gushing out of our beloved Columbus is that no one seems to notice that we’re really coming into our own. And we’re not talking about other cities failing to recognize our inherent awesomeness. We’re talking about us, the fair residents of Columbus, not giving our artists their due time and thanks. So, we decided that we need to do something to draw attention to the issue as well as fix it. Our answer is “the hot 17.”
We’re a promotional company that specializes in local artists from Columbus. We find the best that Cbus has to offer in music, writing, and visual arts, and then show it to the broader Columbus market. We try to connect all of the independent niche art scenes within the city so that our featured artists can reap the benefits of a more cooperative creative community in Columbus.
We’re the one-stop-shop for people living in Columbus looking to get more involved with local arts. We offer an online show calendar that gives fans immediate access to the best shows in town, reviews of local shows and local band albums, and local news specifically about the arts scene in Columbus.
Once a year, we publish a 50 page paperbound book that showcases the best 17 Columbus musical artists that year. We team together with the finest of Columbus’ visual artists and writers, and each band is featured in their own 2 page spread. 17 Columbus writers each craft one piece for one band, and a local photographer creates an elaborate promotional photo featured on the entire left page, complete with smaller live photos of the band that are paired with the band’s article on the right page. This yearly publication is our namesake.
We also maintain an active website with up to date information and featured articles relevant to the artistic community in Columbus. The website is used year around to feature the work of writers and visual artists in the city.
We have a monthly showcase to feature the best musical artists in town. First Friday’s @ Kobo we arrange for 3-5 of Columbus’ best musical artists to play live. This helps us to promote all of our bands throughout the year, and gives us a chance to directly improve the local creative community by designing and hosting creative gigs performed by local artists. We create diverse line-ups of bands in order to give bands exposure to fans that might not see them otherwise.
This is our city. These are our artists. These are our people.
Let’s show some support.
