S3:E3 Committed to creative resilience – Matthew Ché Kowal & Molly North in conversation with Stephanie Fortunato
Guest
Matthew Ché Kowal & Molly North
In conversation with
Stephanie Fortunato
In this episode, our host Stephanie Fortunato sits down with Matthew Ché Kowal and Molly North, founders of Majestic Collaborations, a company that takes an experiential learning approach to community preparedness, specifically using music, art, and cultural festivals as an immersive classroom. The three discuss Majestic Collaborations’ Four Pillars model for successful events: Safety, Sustainability, Accessibility, and Community Engagement.
Date of Recording
15 December 2022
Date of Publication
16 March 2023
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[THEME MUSIC]
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Stephanie Fortunato: Hello and welcome to The Three Bells. This podcast is one of a series brought to you by AEA Consulting and the Global Cultural Districts Network. This podcast explores what's happening around the world at those busy, and sometimes congested intersections of cultural and urban life.
You'll find the series and supporting materials at www.thethreebells.net. And if you like our content, of course, please tell your friends, subscribe, give us a positive review on your podcast listening platform of choice.
Today, I'm speaking to you from Rhode Island, the ancestral land of the Narraganset, the Pokanoket, the Nipmuck, and other indigenous peoples. I pay my respects to those who have and continue to live here, and to all the First Nations people on the many lands on which we're listening from today.
My name is Stephanie Fortunato. I'm the Director of Special Projects for the GCDN. Today I'm speaking with Matthew Che Kowal, and Molly North, the co-founders of Majestic Collaborations. Matthew is a festival coordinator, artistic director, spokesperson, musician, and community leader. Molly is a progressive, multimodal transportation leader with a master's of engineering, and a skillset that includes technical policy and planning skills. Both Matthew and Molly are committed to community resilience in the face of the climate crisis, environmental and structural racism, and declining mental and physical health. They believe in the immense power of gatherings.
Together they've created an innovative experiential learning platform called The Art of Mass Gatherings that catalyses emergency and disaster preparedness training.
So let me welcome Matthew and Molly. Hello!
[00:01:52]
Matt & Molly: Hi, Stephanie.
[00:01:53]
Stephanie Fortunato: Hello, how are you guys?
[00:01:55]
Matt: We're doing good.
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About Our Speakers
Matthew Ché Kowal co-founder of Majestic Collaborations, Majestic Amplifications, and Majestic Water is a festival coordinator, artistic director, spokesperson, musician, and community leader. A recovering marketer with a knack for initiating and identifying trends; he envisioned the experiential learning platform Art of Mass Gatherings Symposium as a way to catalyze emergency preparedness training across multiple stakeholders. +
Molly North co-founded Majestic Collaborations to directly participate in community resilience work. She believes the resilience of a community is enhanced through effective preparation, mitigation, response and recovery, all of which can be enhanced by a strong art community. Molly is also a progressive transportation leader. She has her Master of Engineering degree and has developed a unique set of technical, policy, and planning skills as well as expertise in communication and collaboration. +
Stephanie Fortunato is Director of Special Projects of the Global Cultural Districts Network. Her expertise sits at the intersection of cultural planning and urban development, collaborating with local communities on creating policies and partnerships to strengthen neighbourhoods and transform public spaces. +
