Five local Milwaukee graduates are reimagining how creatives find jobs and connections with an app called ArtsConnect – tailored specifically for careers within the arts sphere.
Back in December 2022, CEO, and then-student Lilith Lenz, studied Vocal Performance at UWM and recognized that her fellow students were having a difficult time finding opportunities for work upon graduation.
“I saw my peers and myself struggle with career development, which led me to question the damaging narrative of the ‘starving artist,’” Lenz said. “That shouldn’t be normalized. ArtsConnect aims to change this by becoming a resource for both students and educational institutions.”
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Career development in the fine arts requires unique tools and guidance, yet students often aren’t provided with it. “ArtsConnect was born from a desire to change that,” Lenz said.
ArtsConnect allows users to build a portfolio, increase networking outreach, gain professional skills and offers a more visual, engaging platform to share their work.
“I’m especially excited about our artist-first job board, curated with special categories tailored to creatives,” Lenz said. “We also offer a centralized event calendar and access to exclusive resources, grants, scholarships and career consulting, focused entirely on artist career development.”
While most networking platforms take on a more corporate angle, Lenz and her team are hoping to integrate ArtsConnect into universities to show students the value of their fields as well as the importance of displaying their work in the correct market. Businesses seeking to hire young, creative talent will also reap the benefits.
“For companies, it’s an opportunity to innovate through collaboration with artists,” Lenz said. “For colleges, it means better employment outcomes, more attractive programs and improved student well-being.”
Lenz works alongside Chief Technical Officer Mitch Allen, Chief Financial Officer Alex Cox and Marketing Director Richard Minten.
Allen hopes that ArtsConnect will soon become the standard for marketing creative talents of all forms.
“Ideally ArtsConnect will morph into a place where artists of all calibers can build their creative portfolio to share with others,” Allen said. “We focus on the creative sphere and making it possible for creatives to make a living doing what they are best at while also helping others find the best fit artist for their needs.”
ArtsConnect’s purpose is to exhibit artists’ work in an engaging way unlike most corporate networking platforms, Cox said.
“Corporate platforms don’t serve creatives well,” Cox said. “They’re not built for visually sharing work or telling a creative story.”
ArtsConnect is seeking investors and applying to accelerators to take the application to the next level as well as ramping up new initiatives for the fall, Lenz said. “We’re currently sprinting to launch our first college pilots and fundraising for a Fall 2025 rollout.”
The platform aims to provide creatives with the same competitive edge in the job market as those in corporate fields.
“This app offers the kind of connection, creation, and job-search tools I wish I had,” UWM alum Minten said. “There just isn’t anything else that truly gives artists a space to showcase their work and connect with others like them. We need a platform built for our community.”
