The Business of the Arts:

A talk with poet & entrepreneur Dasan Ahanu

Dasan Ahanu is a notable poet, community events curator, and entrepreneur. He’s a Nasir Jones Harvard Fellow Alum and a member of Grammy-winning Producer 9th Wonder’s Black Jedi Zulu nonprofit organization. He has been an advocate for preserving the arts community in North Carolina and beyond with his philanthropic efforts. It is because of his commitment to his craft that he is consistently curating creative programming to push the narrative of the importance of the arts forward. Take a look at this engaging conversation we had about monetizing with your art.

KK: Tell us about Dasan Ahanu.

DA: I try to place art and culture anywhere that they can have an effective impact. So that’s the big part, you know, art and culture are my passion. That’s at the heart of everything that I do. Also, I use my artistic and curatorial skills to help different businesses and organizations with some of the things that they’re trying to accomplish. Then, I see where art and creativity can kind of help enhance what they’re trying to do. I get to live in a creative space, day in and day out. It’s wonderful.

KK: When did you first begin this journey? How did this journey of utilizing your creativity and actually knowing when to monetize with it begin for you?

DA: I got laid off. So what happened, really briefly, is that I got laid off from where I was working. I was in a project supervisor position for a tech company. That led me to evaluate. I was re-evaluating what was going on for me at that time and I went back to school to get a deeper education. I was going to study business, but I dove deeper into the arts community. It was a way to have a flexible schedule, but also be able to pay my bills. I was embraced and fell in love with working with arts organizations. I enjoyed working in the community. Also, being a part of events and things that were going on. That, I never left. So it immediately became a search to figure out, how can I stay there? A part of it was networks and relationships. The other part was doing a self-assessment. It was figuring out what skills do I have at my disposal and who needs them? I needed to equip myself in order to enhance those skills, so they would be marketable, and then just kind of plot my way. So that’s how it all started. It was at a transition point in my life. So when you get shaken out of that kind of comfortable place, you got to start thinking outside the box. The arts community was just waiting there for me, to hold me down. So that’s how I got going.

KK: There are times when we get into passion works or projects as creatives due to areas of pain and suffering. Is there anything you’d like to say about creative people or artists in regards to mental health?

DA: Yes, art is cathartic. It’s therapeutic but it’s not therapy. What I do know is that my art helps hold me together. My circle and the folks who love on me hold me down. That circle can include any number of resources that I feel that I need at any given point and time. I know that I can make it to that resource because I have my art but I can’t rely on my art to be the answer that I need. I think that’s an important thing. There’s so much that art opens you up to. It can be a slippery slope for having that many hands, eyes, thoughts, and ideas involved in your pain, trauma, or healing. That involvement should be vetted. You don’t always get to do that when your art is the place where you go to work through those things. Especially, when your art is also public. I’m just very cautious of that. That is a place where you can go that is cathartic and therapeutic to help but it’s not the end.