WELCOME!

Welcome to the HATCHfest Asheville Photography forum – the purpose is to collect ideas for creating an educational, inspiring and entertaining event next year – April 14th – 17th in downtown Asheville. While we are focusing here on photography, we are also hoping to collaborate with the other disciplines in Hatch which include film, music, journalism, architecture, fashion and design technology. We welcome participation from the community through contribution of ideas, talents and volunteer help, so please follow us to keep up to date on our progress.

What is HATCH? HATCH is a year round non-profit organization, designed to develop and foster the growth of creative minds in various industries through mentorship, exposure and networking. Since it’s inception in 2004, HATCH has successfully developed an environment, from HATCHfest to HATCHlabs that strikes the enthusiasm and stimulation of young artist’s creativity throughout the world, by connecting new filmmakers, musicians, photographers, designers, architects, writers and fine artists with award-winning veterans in the entertainment industry. The inspiration of one affects the lives of millions.

Post #1

We had our first HATCH fest Photography meeting June 14th at the Castell Gallery and had about 10 people show up. The purpose of the meeting was to brainstorm a wish list for next year’s HATCH in terms of photography. I will list some of the ideas – feel free to add your own. While this may seem all over the place (it is!), it is in the spirit of true random expression of ideas that we begin here. The culling process will happen later once a direction is established.


So, here you have some of the initial ideas:


1 – Include a panel or exhibit with the history of photography as it’s theme.

2 – Have demos of old photographic processes, such as wet collodion printing and large format photography.

3 – Show alternative modern processes excluding the standard of giclees.

4 – Find ways to exhibit photography that are out of the box – not just framed prints on blank walls. We will likely repeat the nighttime slide show projection that we did last year, as an example.

5 – Find mentors to come present their work to the larger group, but possibly also pair them with “groundbreakers” to fulfill the mentoring piece of HATCH.

6 – Arrange a fundraiser to come up with the money to give honorariums for the mentors and airfare. Having a photo booth at the event is one way to raise funds.

7 – Find sponsors for the above.

8 – Get the local universities involved.

9 – Community Show – find sponsor such as Epson or Canon that will sponsor a community show where people can bring one file in and have it printed, and then artfully displayed in a gallery space during Hatch.

10 – Stage a huge group photo of HATCH participants.

11 – Ask local ad execs, teachers, museum and gallery curators to host a portfolio review.

12 – Collaborate with Fashion participants to stage storefront windows combining the two disciplines.

13 – Show pertinent films such as September Issue. Maybe show outside somewhere at night.

14 – What is a final product that participants can work on and “touch”? Such as the community project idea.

15 – Look into NC Arts Grants to fund mentors.

16 – Have some kind of contest either during or before and have rewards for it.

17 – Appoint someone or several people to be on top of social media to alert interested people of happenings.