Our Story

It’s awkward to recount where you’ve been, how you got here, and where you’re trying to go. This movement started on July 4th, 2010 as a small group of guys who shared a passion for the United States of America, the Rust Belt region, and – most importantly – the men and women who built both. Some of us came to this from entertainment business backgrounds; some were soldiers. To try and explain the early discussions in words wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense, but we can assure you that it wasn’t an easy correlation to make between us.

We talked through a hundred ideas – none of which we were qualified or capable of pulling off – and eventually settled on the idea of giving it a name, throwing a big ol’ party, and seeing what everyone else thought it might/could/should be. After all, we might have been from drastically different backgrounds, but we all enjoyed a good party. We will be the first to admit in hindsight: the party idea should have been a massive failure…

However, for whatever reason, it was very much exactly what we had hoped: a massive gathering of over 250 friends and strangers, coming together to talk about issues that mattered to them at a civic level. There were hot dogs, veggie burgers, and giant walls painted with whiteboard paint; it was the most unlikely success you could imagine. We were thrilled, stunned…and stuck trying to answer a question we didn’t have the answer to: who and/or what was Saving Cities…

A nonprofit that focused on civic issues within the region?
A creative business incubator for passionate young entrepreneurs?
A housing project that bought, rehabbed, and resold vacant spaces?
An event company that hosted civic engagement events throughout the region?
A political action committee?
A media company that created community centric content?
All of the above?
Some of the above?
None of the above?

It was an exciting, confusing, and very intense moment in time. And as if the pressure of not having any clue what we were actually going to try and accomplish wasn’t enough; we were approached by GOOD Magazine, an international publication that talks about social innovations, to do an interview about Saving Cities. No, we’re serious. An interview for a major publication after three weeks of existence, one hell of a party, and quite possibly the boldest company name ever (with accompanying logo awesomeness).  But again, we had no mission outside of caring about “things”.

We did the interview anyway; who are we to deny such an amazing opportunity?! That article came out in early September 2010 with the title “Saving Cities Solves the Rust Belt Brain Drain” (we have been incredibly fortunate with amazingly kind headlines). It was, thankfully, full of very nice words that didn’t tie us down to any specific idea outside of doing whatever we could to make the Rust Belt a cooler place to live, work, and play. We will be forever grateful to them for that fact.

Since this thing was starting to take on a life of it’s own, we decided that we really needed to put our efforts towards a specific project. Being that two of us came from a film and television production background, we decided to embark on making the first feature length documentary about the Rust Belt region and it’s amazing people. Seemed like a clear task, and one that wasn’t so far outside of our wheelhouse. We overlooked only a few handfuls of things, the most important being: we had no cash, no contacts, and not a single piece of film gear.

Our solution was to call, email, or simply show up at the doorstep of just about anyone who had ever mentioned the Rust Belt online. We reached out to authors, historians, professors, nonprofit directors, filmmakers, politicians; those were some crazy 100+ hour weeks back then. We took as much time as people would give us, boning up on everything Rust Belt. It was very much a crash course in the region that we have often talked about trying to package for others to experience. Those individuals who were so incredibly kind and open with us in the early days of this endeavor will be forever credited with changing our lives forever.

After we felt like we had a good network starting to build, we started to pull together the meager savings we had and bought whatever gear that sum allowed us to purchase (which, we assure you, wasn’t much). We made a list of the additional gear we would need and launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise the rest of the cash. If you’ve ever been part of a Kickstarter campaign, you’ll understand when we say that those were the most stressful 60 days we’ve had since we stumbled in to this. However, at the kind hand of a lot of people who share our passion and belief in the Rust Belt, we were successful in raising the money.

During that campaign we were also on the phone booking interviews, scheduling trips across the region, and trying desperately to convince ourselves that this was a worthwhile effort that people would actually care about.