NASH at Nite

When live events shut down across the Pacific Northwest in early 2020, a group of Seattle community leaders made a call and held an open Zoom session. Out of that conversation, Northwest Arts Streaming Hub (NASH) was born — an emergency response effort to keep the regional arts community connected, visible, and financially supported during an unprecedented crisis.

I came on as Marketing Director, content manager, and strategist — and for most of what NASH did, I was the one doing it. Marketing, social media, content strategy, streaming operations: a true one-man band in service of a mission that mattered.

From zero, we built a live-streaming operation that supported over 100 regional events and partnered with more than 50 nonprofits across Washington and Oregon. Every event was a real production: coordinating artists, managing technical workflows, creating promotional assets, and distributing across social platforms to reach audiences who could no longer show up in person.

The content strategy centered on authentic storytelling — putting Pacific Northwest artists front and center in formats that felt like real events, not substitutes for them. Audiences didn't just watch. They showed up, engaged, and kept coming back. In the process, NASH served over 500 artists across the Seattle and broader PNW arts community.

NASH at Nite was a content format I created — a livestreamed Northwest variety show built to spotlight Seattle artists and give the community something to gather around during lockdown. We aired a pilot and two additional episodes, and the response made one thing clear: there was something real here worth expanding.

The community decided to take it further. In partnership with The Vera Project, NASH at Nite became the foundation for the Digital Production Lab NW: a free, four-month media production career training program for youth ages 15–24 in Seattle, supported by the City of Seattle's Office of Economic Development. The DPLN series — 8 episodes produced by program fellows — lives on The Vera Project's YouTube. The original NASH at Nite pilot remains on Northwest Arts Streaming Hub's channel.

The program ran two tracks simultaneously:

NASH was always an emergency response — built fast, run lean, and laser-focused on a community that needed it. Over its run, NASH supported over 500 artists and helped dozens of arts organizations across the Pacific Northwest stay connected to their audiences when venues went dark.

The Vera Project partnership gave that work a second chapter: instead of simply surviving the moment, we used what we'd built to train the next wave of Seattle's young artists. The Digital Production Lab NW brought youth directly into The Vera Project ecosystem — not as attendees, but as producers. Participants gained hands-on experience in audio, video, and livestreaming that translated directly into professional opportunity. The Vera Project is an organization where approximately 30% of current staff started as youth members in similar youth arts programs — a testament to what intentional investment in young creatives can produce.

When NASH closed its doors, it did so having fulfilled the mission it was created for: keeping the Seattle arts community alive through the hardest stretch of the pandemic, and leaving something meaningful behind in the process. That's what community-driven digital strategy looks like at its best.