Happy One Year Anniversary WELD Nashville!
I’m standing inside a brand new, freshly delivered SuperCube office in WELD Nashville, looking around at a space populated with some of the most awe-inspiring, kind-hearted, and driven creatives and entrepreneurs in this vibrant, ever expanding city. Only one year since our summer launch of 2015, and WELD has transformed into the fully realized vision that we had dreamt of. The ethos behind WELD has always been that “We create better together” and though this applies on a daily basis to the multitude of collaborative projects and relationships forged, it’s also true of the space itself.
Whether it’s the shipping containers, custom built to re-imagine the “office” as a piece of essential gear, or the brilliant photography that now lines the gallery walls, every piece of effort put into the space was created by a member or somebody who has a real, passionate and vested interest in the mission behind WELD. Often, people come in for the first time and immediately mention something to the effect of, “There’s a really good energy here.”
My hope is that everybody who enters WELD trusts that the reason for its existence is to truly and tangibly unleash people’s ambitions and aspirations into actuality, to cut out the friction and antagonism that easily prevents us from doing the world-changing art and innovation that we desire and want to identify with.
When we create a healthy system, we become it’s healthy inhabitants. “First you make your home, and then your home makes you.”
If you want to create something, don’t be shy. Three years ago, WELD Nashville didn’t exist. Austin and I went to a hobby lobby in Waco, TX, bought some balsa wood and made this in the backyard of the coffeshop, Common Grounds. A few months later, we visited Nashville on a scouting trip and met Chris Cole, Larry Kloess, Kate Gazaway, Stephen Proctor, among others who first showed the immense hospitality representative of this city as a whole.
Katie Lentile, who believed in the vision of WELD Nashville before the lease on a building was even signed, was recruited and hired. And now over 100 members daily interact, encourage, collaborate, and support one another. There’s so much more ahead, but as we celebrate our one year anniversary, it’s amazing to look back to the beginning and realize that it was merely a spark.
-Jordan Bellamy, WELD Co-Founder
Check out the testimonials below and get a taste of who WELD is:
