Stephanie Dyson Capstone

Posted by Stephanie Dyson in Capstone - Bey - Wed on

From the ever-influential (and never-aging) lips of Pharrell Williams: “'Entrepreneur 'just denotes that you recognize that you're doing things across disciplines and that you're blazing your own path.” My capstone was my own exploration of the term entrepreneur and of myself as a renaissance woman. I actually began my Capstone in June 2015 when I began work with a thrift shop located on South Street called Here’s To Cool Stuff. There, I met a myriad partners and friends who would work with my over the course of my senior year to attend learning events and produce the following projects:

  • Administrative Internship at The Village of Arts & Humanities in North Philadelphia

  • YCenter 2-Week Social Entrepreneurship Incubator

  • Five Finger Posse Art Shows

  • Radiation Media Gang Events

  • Philly Art Collective Events

  • Events Internship with Art(is) for Kids

  • Elebration Celebrations

Elebration, the group that I did a majority of my work with, gave me the opportunity to build my personal clientele and help me decide that I’d like to go to school for Public Relations. I worked with countless artists, managing their social media accounts and commission requests, creating business cards, organizing and being a liaison for galleries and shows. In terms of shows and events, I managed four over the course of the school-year:

  • South Street Cypher @ InksterInc (530 S. 4th Street) - 3/12

  • Philly Art Collective 7th Installment @ OpenSpacePHL- 4/16

  • Locals Only @ H2CS (1214 South Street) - 5/6

  • Frieday @ The Boom Room (1300 N. Front Street) - 5/20


Video footage from our extremely successful South Street Cypher. Hosted by Elebration at InksterInc, only 23 people showed up when our doors opened. By leaving doors open and allowing the music and art to ebb and flow, we ended the night marching to Kendrick Lamar's "Alright" with nearly 70 people. This made the way for various interviews on small blogs and media outlets within and out of the city. All credits for the video go to our media specialist at Elebration, Yusri Yunivrs.
A poster that I created for an event I co-curated with the Here's to Cool Stuff team. A multidisciplinary art show and locally curated pop-up shop, Locals Only garnered nearly 80 enthused patrons. In helping H2CS curate and manage events, I helped their profits tremendously. When they were previously breaking even at best, they had a booming 6 months of profits when I began promotional work with them. I have also been commissioned as their In-house Events DJ when school lets out for the summer.
​One of my favorite and most interesting side jobs was doing creative direction and styling for my good friend, Sean. Han.soloo on instagram, Sean has had his recent work published in many online, New-York-based publications. This gave me some insight not only on entrepreneurship, as he is one of the few artists I know who makes a living as an artist and as an artist alone, but on the fashion industry and allowed me to create my own ideas on style and creative direction. 
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From working with my various teams, I found that, however long and tasking the processes of event and project management may be, it’s something that I love to do. My future projects include the Philly Art Collective’s 8th Installment @ OpenSpacePHL - 5/22, Elebration Banquet - 6/11, Eleblock Party- 6/18, Art(is) For Kids Wine & Dine - 7/1, "Gentrified" Book Signing with author and photographer Lamar Bonéy @ The Village of Arts and Humanities - 7/4. I was a quiet power-player in Philadelphia’s underground art scene, and plan to take everything that I learned this year and not only incorporate it into my studies in college, but continue to follow the path that I am blazing.

View my annotated Bibliography here


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