On May 4, 2018, MJ Freed Theater, Butcher Shop Rehab and Chester Made hosted an evening with Ouigi Theodore, creative director and founder of The Brooklyn Circus. Ouigi presented Community Branding & The Hundred Year Plan: Everything is Useful, and explored how Chester’s history, culture and unique identity can create a community brand that sets it apart from brands not grounded in community and brings what everyone has to offer to the forefront.
Ouigi Theodore (Left) facilitates a discussion during his talk with the help of Chester Made Artistic Director Devon Walls (Right) who says, “Looking at everything The Brooklyn Circus has accomplished in Brooklyn and San Francisco, I look at Chester the same way. We wanted to be bigger and better without using “politics” and just using hard work, our own history, and culture to build something, which most people said couldn’t be done, and everything we needed was already here. We want to keep on building and building, and just getting this group in the room shows that what we wanna do is tangible, all we gotta do is get up off our butts and keep moving forward.”
Photo by Greg Irvin
Ouigi connected with local artists and entrepreneurs who are doing the work to build their own community brand. He shared his hundred year plan to show that this work does not happen overnight, and having an end goal in sight lets you see the steps it takes to build a quality community brand.
Photo by Greg Irvin
Attendees got a chance to ask questions about building their personal brands and the best way to connect with a community and grow sustainably. Like many in Chester, Ouigi sees ownership and creating space as the secret to representing so many things that define success like doing what we love, contributing to the community, and breaking through the “shelf life” most brands suffer from.
Photo by Anthony Gyepi-Garbrah
Ouigi Theodore and business partner Michelle Donald definitely left an impression on Chester that will not soon be forgotten. Chester Made took some time to look at our brand and develop our most recent events in a focused and engaging way.
Photo by Anthony Gyepi-Garbrah
