Young Artists With Potential

Fans of the 1989 film Dead Poets Society (or of 19th century bearded poets…*cough cough Walt Whitman*) will inevitably be familiar with the concept of the “barbaric yawp”: an untranslatable, primal cry from somewhere deep within the human spirit that says “I’m here! I exist and I demand to be heard!” According to their founders, this is the exact ethos that the Atlanta artist collective YAWP (Young Artists With Potential) aims to capture in their work.

I sat down with several members of YAWP’s board (Abby, Adazee, Isabel, and Levi) to discuss what it is that they do, the challenges of being a young artist, and the future of the organization and arts in Atlanta.

 Karina: So, can y’all explain a little bit about what exactly YAWP is? How do you define “potential”?

Abby: YAWP is a collaboration between Atlanta creators who are looking to highlight and support local art through events, content creation, and artist “spotlights”. Our primary goal is to highlight people in the community, because a lot of young artists don’t get the recognition that they deserve. Potential would be anyone who seems passionate about their craft, whether through creating a lot or reaching out or making powerful art that impacts other people.

Isabel: We’re trying to target artists who don’t necessarily have a huge following or are unsigned and are looking to reach new communities! A lot of artists dabble in a lot of different mediums, so things like photography, music, visual arts, and it’s really cool to have insight into all of these little pockets of Atlanta art. That’s kind of what we’re trying to do: merge that gap so that all artists are able to support each other.

Karina: How did YAWP get its start?

Abby: Our founders, Levi, Matt, Robby, and myself started YAWP in 2021 when we were students at GSU. Levi, Matt, and Robby were fraternity brothers and had experience putting on “Battle of the Bands” events for their fraternity and wanted an opportunity to continue that after college. They noticed that there wasn’t really a platform for creators (Instagram doesn’t quite cut it), so we decided to come together to create YAWP! We currently use GSU as a home base but are doing outreach to all of Atlanta, and have plans to expand even beyond that.

Karina: To what do y’all attribute most of your growth?

Isabel: We focus pretty heavily on marketing and social media! Our Instagram does something called an “Artist Spotlight” where we highlight different young artists, and a lot of the time, the people who follow those artists start following us.

Adazee: I think there’s a certain sense of community being cultivated around YAWP. We like to put the artists first, because that’s really what it’s all about. I think that sense of community is what allows us to grow; people feel comfortable coming to our page and our events because they know that anything with the YAWP name is going to be a positive experience.

Karina: Your most recent event was the “dARTy”. Can you explain what that was and what we can expect in terms of events in the future?

Abby: We actually have a fashion show coming up on August 27th, but I’ll let Adazee and Isabel talk about the dARTy because they were the ones who put the most effort into it.

Adazee: I want to go ahead and credit Isabel because she did most of the work and she actually hosted it in her backyard! But yeah we had live performers, an interactive art wall (that turned into an art ground *laughs*), an art “gallery”, and even a tattoo artist!

Isabel: The main idea was “we want a summer event that’s accessible to as many people as possible.” Whenever we do events at venues, there’s often an 18+ limit and other limitations, but we wanted to be able to include high schoolers and younger people as well, especially because my sister is in high school and she was performing. We also always make sure that the artists we support are getting paid, because we all know that it’s hard to get the proper treatment when you’re a smaller artist.

Karina: Has anything from your personal backgrounds affected the way you define what it means to be an artist?

Isabel: I think growing up, we’re always told that art is not a viable career option, and I think that mentality is especially true when you’re growing up in an immigrant household. We want to make it a point that art is a valid career and that you can really pursue it because there’s a community here for you that’s willing to support you! It’s never too late and it’s never too early.

Adazee: Exactly, it’s like “Become an engineer, it’s better that way.” Anything outside of that or doctor is questionable in the eyes of immigrant parents. The thing about it is that, as an artist, having that background enriches your art and allows you to showcase the fact that you have a different, unique experience, as difficult as it may be.

Karina: Atlanta is obviously a very diverse community, what is YAWP doing specifically to highlight that diversity and be more inclusive?

Adazee: I think for us, it makes it even better that we chose Atlanta as our home base, because the diversity of the city itself is the biggest reason why I appreciate and identify with Atlanta. We’re focusing on uplifting young artists, but really it’s about our individual voices and our unique experiences and backgrounds. For me as a black person, YAWP makes me feel like I fit right in, because diversity is second nature to us.

Isabel: Exactly, we’re actually so lucky that Atlanta is so diverse because we get to see different communities and connect with them!! We’ve worked really hard to try and be as inclusive as possible, but I was definitely hesitant at the beginning because our founding members are three white men and one white woman. There’s always room for improvement. There was an instance that an AFAB artist came to one of our events early, but didn’t get a soundcheck until minutes before the show. Abby and I sat down and said “How can we ensure that this doesn’t happen again?”, so it definitely takes difficult conversations. We’re also focusing on having inclusive sizing for our merch. We want to be inclusie to everyone: younger and older people, the LGBTQ+ community, and BIPOC, to name a few. There’s always room to grow, so we always want to take feedback from the community. 

Karina: With all that being said, what does the future hold for YAWP?

Levi: We’ve been able to sustain a certain degree of growth, so I think in the future we’d like to take that step to scale. We have a proof of concept now to the point where we could take it to that next level of growth. Expansion is the ultimate goal!

Isabel: From a marketing point of view, we want to reach 1,000 by the end of the year on our Instagram, tap more into our Twitter, and start posting more on our YouTube channel. We’re focused on creating fun content because at the end of the day, we’re all friends and we all admire each other’s work. We want our events to be self-sustaining, so we do all the event planning, but can hire other people to do the busy work on the actual day-of (bartending, running sound, etc). 

Adazee: I’m going to make one final point, and that is that I see YAWP being the definitive name for young artists. I’m just gonna drop the mic there.

Huge thanks to Isabel Call Gómez, Abigail Cook, Levi Zindler, and Adazee Imarhiagbe for sitting down with me to answer all of my questions!