Kalil Sykes and Joshua Jung are creatives – musicians, to be exact. A vocal artist specializing in rap, Sykes’ focus is songwriting, whereas Jung has been producing alternative R&B-styled tracks for over six years.
The two met on campus as first-year hallmates, and both felt their creativity was stifled by an environment that prioritized academics.
“There was just an air of dread over the campus for the sentiment towards creativity,” Sykes explained. “It was like, ‘you do school, you do business, STEM, dope. You paint? Do that on the side, the big boys are talking.’ I always felt mad offended by that.”
As they grew acclimated to campus life, their desire for community grew — a community that shaped and cultivated their passions. In the fall of 2022, those efforts culminated in the creation of Rochester Producers & Musicians (RPM), a group designed as a space for creatives to network, showcase, and embody the creativity integral to their identity.
The club originally only offered music feedback sessions before adding student-run performances and large-scale events. While originally operating as an affiliate of the Audio and Music Engineering Society (AMES), RPM officially became its own organization towards the end of spring 2024 semester.
“It seemed like we were meeting a need in the community for an underserved population of students that created original art, specifically music and performance-based art,” Sykes said. “It was such a surprise in the fall when we realized [the success we had], but there were questions over how sustainable it would be.”
While RPM fulfilled that initial need for community, the two realized how their desire was universal. As they developed relationships with other creative clubs, RPM began to understand the potential for more collaboration. Whether you were a musician, a photographer, or a member of a performing arts group, there was a sense of creative passion that resonated. It was that embodiment of passion that Sykes and Jung sought to cultivate amongst the centers of creativity that already existed on campus.
“There’s all these different creative pockets and individual communities, [and] they’re like islands,” Sykes explained. “They’re really nice islands […] but nobody knows about them, and along with nobody knowing about them, all the people who would want to know about them don’t have a big Hollywood sign of knowing about the existing creative community on the University of Rochester campus.”
That sentiment led to efforts that culminated in the Creative Expo: a networking event designed to showcase the various creative clubs on campus, designed to foster and empower the passion that exists through Rochester’s students.
“It’s really great seeing other people with the same mindset that we have going into things that we’re passionate about,” Jung explained. “[The expo is] going to be a really potent opportunity for creatives to flourish, because there’s no common space for that yet. And we’re really hopeful that we can make a change and really inspire people to innovate going forward outside of traditional academic spaces.”
In establishing the Expo, Sykes and Jung sought to co-host the event with frequent RPM collaborators, like No Jackets Required (NJR), and the AMES. By assigning individuals with unique talents and skill sets to roles that would best showcase their respective strengths, the expo developed as a collaboration of diverse talents and expertise. The event’s main challenge was presenting a united front while simultaneously creating a showcase that would echo the honor and importance that members each gave their own work.
“One of the problems that we ran into [at first] was [defining] what constituted a creative club,” Jung explained. “Because what we’re doing in being the main organizers of [the Creative Expo] was saying that we’re okay with bearing the weight of being representatives of the [collective] creative community for a short period of time.”
The event, co-hosted by NJR, UR’s Photo Club, Logos, URTV, and Rochester Design Hub, serves to inform the greater community of how students create on campus, with organizations, resources, and information meant for facilitating creation. During the expo, students will not only hear from local alumni in creative fields, but also from professor and filmmaker Pirooz Kalayeh, who will be in attendance as a guest speaker. The session is intended for those who are looking for collaborators in the arts.
The idea, for Sykes and Jung, is to direct students toward organizations that would foster their interests.
“If this succeeds, then hopefully we’ll be seeing a lot more creatives on campus actually being encouraged to have the confidence to chase that project that they didn’t think they could do; or talk to that person who they thought had really cool portfolio work that they wanted to collaborate with, or gather a team together for an idea that they thought wouldn’t be possible,” Sykes said.
For RPM, community is what holds purpose – and by establishing the Expo with community-building at its core, their hopes reflect their greater desire to embody the creative culture they’ve grown over their own college careers.
“Everyone craves community. Everyone wants people to be around,” Jung explained. “A lot of people don’t have friend groups. A lot of people do have friend groups, but they still seek community, people who resonate with them deeply of their passions. To create a space for people to find community, cross-organizational community, that’s gonna be really important […] if you have the same passions as somebody in one club and you’re in another club, you can come together through an event like this.”
The Creative Expo will be held Feb. 20, from 6 to 9 p.m. in Feldman Ballroom. Those interested can visit their Instagram, @urc.expo, for more information.
rmation.
