Category: Event Planning

Every Folk

Alison Cantor

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I’m working alongside two of my folksiest friends to create Every Folk, a three day all-inclusive sleep-away camp for adults. The camp is designed to share traditional arts, knowledge and skills through music, storytelling, crafts and food. It will be held bi-yearly at Camp Krem in Boulder Creek, CA.

As co-founder, I’ve produced many of Every Folk’s key elements. I created the camp’s website and built out the social media profiles. I’ve also handled Every Folk’s finances, setting up the company bank account, managing Eventbrite ticket sales and pricing, and helping make decisions about the camp’s structure, budget, and staff and instructor pay. My co-founders lovingly refer to me as the Accountability Director because of my unique ability to wrangle their creative energy and put it to productive use.

Check out http://www.everyfolk.com to learn more.

The Heroic Future

Alison Cantor

In 2016, Alex Steffen and I produced a three-night talk series called The Heroic Future. The talks were filmed and later edited into a single video for general audiences. 

We successfully crowdfunded the project with a Kickstarter that generated more than $75,000. With Alex’s voiceover and some creative direction, I created the Kickstarter’s promotional video. I also edited the page content, gathered press mentions, and followed up on backer leads. Check out the page here and watch the video below.

Once the series was funded, I shifted my focus to planning and producing the three nights by zeroing in on the following tasks:

  • securing a venue
  • hiring a film crew
  • renting equipment
  • ensuring venue compliance
  • recruiting volunteers
  • designing programs
  • selling additional tickets
  • creating a scholarship ticket ticket program and offering tickets to applicants

By managing all these details, I enabled Alex to focus almost exclusively on content. The three nights ran smoothly and brought together hundreds of attendees. 

After the final curtain, I again shifted my focus, this time to working with a professional video editor to cut the six hours of raw footage from the series into something digestible for a general audience. I contracted this editor for the project, and worked with Alex to select highlights from the three nights and slice them into a cohesive flow. The resulting video can be found here.

Camp Orange

Alison Cantor

I was one of 32 friends who came together to create Camp Orange, a banana themed Burning Man camp, in 2013. I have since lead several committees, including Decor Committee, Play Things Committee and MOOP Committee, and I’ve [radically] participated in many more. In particular, I was responsible for procuring massive amounts of fabric for decor and dome covering, I made 10 yellow rip-stop nylon hammocks (5 for the “banana bunch” pictured below, 5 for inside the dome), I helped sew the fabric cover on the banana-stand top, and I lent my skills and labor to numerous other camp projects.

2012 – Just a banana and a dome!
2013 – Banana Bunch added
(Alison made the rip-stop nylon yellow hammocks for the bunch.)
2013 – The Largest Known Hammock makes it’s debut on the playa
2014 – The Largest Known Hamock comes home to live at camp
Our twice weekly gift every year – hundreds of chocolate covered frozen bananas
2015 – Camp Orange ups it’s decor game.

In 2015, I stitched more than a dozen custom embroidered patches for my camp-mates (of their respective playa names). Click through to see a sampling of them below:

As a founding member (aka an “orange banana”), I help push the camp to contribute to the Burn as best it can every year.

Cascade Bicycle Club Outreach

Alison Cantor

296480_10150371889949081_317180854_nI coordinated Cascade Bicycle Club’s ambassador outreach program. In my role there as Community Programs Assistant, I interviewed, hired, and trained our bicycle ambassadors to go out to events and talk to people about bicycling. We worked together to educate the public about the rights and responsibilities of people who bike, the bike education programs offered by Cascade, riding advice, the events and volunteer opportunities Cascade had to offer, and more.

I managed their schedules and kept them up to date with Cascade’s most current messaging. I often joined them, tabling at events alongside them, or occasionally filling in on my own when our ambassadors were unavailable.

I also recruited and trained volunteers to assist with dozens of helmet sale events that I organized across the city, providing low-cost helmets to communities in need.