People need people.
It seems simple, but this basic need is the spark that keeps the fire burning for Collide Creative.
Collide Creative is an organization committed to fostering sustainable connections and holistic growth for creative individuals and local businesses in the Waco community. It serves as an intersection for organizations and creative individuals to collaborate through apparel, social media, events and their recent paradigm shift; the Collide Box.
Founders of Collide Creative, Ryan and Madison Thomas, are firm believers in the importance of friendship. With Ryan’s business and music background and Madison’s dedication to social work, their career experiences have been vastly different over the years. However, time and again, they’ve both come to the same conclusion: they need friends to be successful.
This realization became extremely apparent to Ryan in 2016. He was pursuing his music career and began to feel stuck when his friends started giving him the encouragement, constructive criticism, and access to skillsets he needed to be successful.
I ran into friends who had skills that I didn’t have, and they were able to add to the route of my ideas becoming a reality,” Ryan said. “You are a product of your environment, and you need people,” he continued.
Gone are the days of the self-made man. This notion led Ryan to start a small community organization that would help creative individuals in the community meet, collaborate and network with one another. To kick off the organization in 2017, Ryan wanted to throw a party for a few people in the Waco creative community to meet up. A party that he thought would capture at-most 50 people ended up drawing in over 150 Waco creatives craving connection with one another. And so, Collide Creative was born.
Today, Collide thrives off of creating networking opportunities for people to connect with others and grow in ways they probably wouldn’t otherwise.
“We take it upon ourselves to create environments for people to network that are organic and people-centric,” Ryan said.
Behind every product and every networking event produced by Collide are three core values: create, connect, grow. While the organization embodies these values in many ways, they are manifested most in the Collide Box. The Collide Box is a quarterly subscription box filled with goods and products sourced from local businesses and artists that provides a platform beyond the box for community engagement and collaboration.
The box is the physical product that represents those values because it’s taking people from the community and connecting them to local businesses,” Madison said.
Unlike your typical subscription box, the Collide Box is built specifically for the Waco community, from local shops and artisans to your hands. A subscription to the box invests in the Waco economy through local sourcing that supports Waco businesses by purchasing and delivering their products to local consumers. In addition, the Collide Box supports the environment by shortening the supply chain, recycling boxes, cutting single-use plastic.
The concept of the box itself is unique, yes, but the connection comes beyond the box. When members of the community subscribe to the Collide Box, they are invited to pick it up at a Box Party, where they can meet the very businesses and artisans whose products are inside the box.
“We believe in it because these people are connecting to local businesses that they can continue to show up to in their city and create long-term customer relationships with,” Madison said.
These box parties are another avenue for community engagement and collaboration, enabling local consumers and businesses to form lasting, symbiotic relationships with one another. Through the box, events, working groups, and creative consulting, Collide Creative provides a platform for members of the Waco community to build a better future together.
“The things we do – the box and events and everything else – is centered around helping the people in the community and local businesses collide,” Madison said.
Madison’s education in social work and background in social innovation and Ryan’s persistent drive to create complement each other perfectly to make this collision happen. The two are innate connectors, continually seeking to provide the people around them with the support and tools they need to thrive.
Moving forward, they hope to work closely with the marginalized or under-resourced members of our community to provide them with access to the creative connections and resources they might not have otherwise. College students and minority and women-owned businesses are just a few of the members of our community they’re passionate about supporting. Ryan and Madison believe everyone has a valuable story to share.
There are people executing what your dreams are. Watch them, learn and take the steps to build yourself up and start your own story,” Ryan said. “It’s just about the courage to show up, nothing is as scary as it seems,” Madison added.
Helping people find the courage to show up and start their own story is just the beginning. Collide Creative is empowering people to build relationships that will strengthen our community’s economic and social fabric for years to come. Join in on their efforts by pre-ordering their first box, now until March 17th
Order your Collide Box at https://www.collidecreatve.com/c-o-l-l-i-d-e-box.
