Hey girls, Are you looking for some culture?

Two years ago, a chance encounter with the "Women of Culture" meetup in a stylish Chelsea residence caught my attention. As a real estate professional, the setting intrigued me. The event's substance – contemporary art and insights from female artists – proved compelling. What truly sets this group apart is its founder, Alexandra Harper. Her clear mission and understated leadership style create a refreshing atmosphere different from the typical meetup experience. Women of Culture exemplifies the sophisticated opportunities New York City offers to those willing to step outside their comfort zone. I wanted to start the fall by introducing you to Alex and Women of Culture.?

1. What inspired you to start the "Women of Culture" group and what was your vision for it?

?Women of Culture was founded out of a personal desire to connect more deeply with the arts and fellow arts-minded women in NYC and beyond. When I first had the idea for the business in 2015, I lived in NYC for about 10 years and worked as a Graphic Designer at Johnson & Johnson.

?I knew a fair amount of people in NYC and yet I felt very disconnected from myself as well as most of the people I knew. I was tired of the same old bar scene on the weekends and of having to drag friends to see a Broadway show or beg them to come with me to a museum or gallery.

?Having grown up as an only child of divorced parents in a small town in Vermont, I always had a natural drive to seek out and build community. I was already considered the ‘social planner’ among my friends, and I was particularly interested in building female friendships. As a graduate of an all-girls boarding school, I missed the feeling of being surrounded by strong, independent women and felt disappointed by the fact that many of the conversations and activities among my female friends in NYC tended to revolve around meeting and/or pleasing men.

?After some extensive soul-searching, I realized there might be an opportunity to bring women together through art-based experiences in order to help them foster the deeper sort of female camaraderie and connection I have always believed to be essential to achieving true gender parity and female empowerment.

?My mission has always been to help others, especially those who might feel they are outside of the art world, to discover the power and necessity of the arts while also fostering deep and meaningful connections. I believe that we are all innately creative and that experiencing the arts helps us connect with our inner, artistic child - opening up new perspectives, ideas and possibilities for us to discover, even as non-artists. I also believe deeply that many of the problems in today’s world stem from a deep-rooted loneliness and feeling of other-ness within people who lack authentic community.

?By helping women in particular to feel more connected to one another, themselves and the world around them, my vision is to help build, even if only on a small scale, a more equal, empathic and connected society.

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Was it important to you that it be for women only?

?In the course of the extensive soul searching I did to identify my desire to start this community, I kept coming back to wanting more female friendships and camaraderie in my life. At the time, I was in a serious romantic relationship but felt disconnected from many of the women I knew and was missing the sense of feminine solidarity I had felt when I attended all-girls boarding school.

?While I did consider creating a more gender-inclusive community, I worried that the events might lose their focus if a dating element came in and also felt there were many other groups and opportunities for mixed gender gatherings already in existence. While there are a plethora of women-only communities now, back in 2015, they were much less common. I realized that I wanted to carve out a space where women might feel more comfortable to gather and be fully themselves, without the stress of impressing men or warding off unsolicited advances.

?After having hosted over 500 women-only events in the past 10 years, I can attest to the fact there is a magic that occurs when women gather exclusively with purpose and intention. I have witnessed first-hand the power of women-only gatherings to help women build the type of more authentic, honest and open connections with one another which I believe are an absolutely necessary (and sometimes overlooked/underrated) part of achieving true gender parity.

?While our non-member exclusive gatherings are now open to all genders, the Art-full membership and member-only events are open only to women in order to maintain this commitment to fostering female solidarity. My hope is that, by helping women feel more supported and connected to one another, they may also feel more confident and fully engaged in their lives and able to continue the difficult task of working toward greater equality.

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How did you go about finding the initial members and getting the group off the ground?

?Despite some hesitation, I first started the community on meetup.com because it was the lowest cost and most efficient way to get the word out. I had previously had some negative experiences attending meetups run by other people at which I felt the event planning was bad and the event intentions were unclear, so perhaps those experiences helped me to work hard to differentiate my events from the start. I wanted to use meetup as a marketing tool but never intended to create just another meetup group, if that makes sense.

?My mission was to create highly curated events that would attract high caliber, intelligent and independent women due to the professionalism and superior quality of my organizational and planning skills. I sought from the beginning to create a highly inclusive, warm and welcoming environment at each event that would encourage repeat attendance and deeper interactions and conversations among attendees. I think this clarity of intention helped the community to grow quickly and attract the sort of membership that I wanted to foster.

?How do you select and decide on which art exhibits, performances, or cultural events for the group to attend?

I always let the values which I have established for myself and for the community guide my decisions and curation. I am focused personally and professionally on fostering growth, curiosity, empathy and equality so I try to select exhibits and performances that I think reinforce these ideals. I, of course, tend to focus on working with and promoting women artists and creatives whenever possible as I have a secondary mission of elevating the work of women in the arts. But I also try to choose events which may encourage attendees to discover something new about themselves or the world around them, learning new perspectives, pushing their own boundaries and being open to deeper connections both to themselves and to one another because of the cultural experience they’ve attended during the event.

?Events seem to be focused on visual art, dance and some Broadway shows – have you ever considered exploring independent films and classical music?

Yes, we have also attended some classical music performances and would be very open to attending independent films as well. I simply haven’t had the time or bandwidth to curate those sorts of events but am always open to suggestions and assistance in that area :)

Group Evolution/Growth:

?6. How has the "Women of Culture" group evolved over time, and what future plans or goals do you have for it?

It has definitely evolved as I’ve become clearer on my goals and also slowly dedicated more time and energy toward building it. The pandemic of course presented a lot of challenges and forced a big change in the membership, but I think it’s been for the best as the new members who have come to the community since COVID have been more aligned with the sort of community I am looking to foster.

We currently have around 100 paid Art-full members in NYC, and I am always looking to grow the membership in hopes of helping more women establish a deeper connection to the arts and to one another. I am also looking to launch the membership in LA and do more work with private groups and corporate teams to help them connect to their creativity and discover the city through the lens of art and culture.

?7. Your activities have also expanded to traveling to different areas - for example, Miami and now the first overseas event to Paris. Could you share more about that?

We started doing more local “Weekend of Culture” trips to artsy places relatively close to NYC such as the Hamptons, the Berkshires, the Hudson Valley, Philadelphia, Boston and Newport, but after the pandemic subsided, I felt that we all wanted to travel more and venture farther afield. I have brought groups to Art Basel Miami for the past three years which has been a great success, and many attendees report building even deeper connections to other community members as a result of these trips.

As for Paris, I actually lived there many years ago and credit my time in France with helping me become even more in love with and addicted to the arts, so I have long dreamt of planning a trip there for the group and received many requests from members for international travel. It seemed to me that the Paris+ Art Basel fair presents the perfect opportunity/excuse to visit the city of light, so we’ll be there this October!

Connections/Impact:

?8. How has participating in these shared art experiences fostered connections, discussions, or personal growth among the group members?

I have witnessed first-hand how experiencing and engaging with the arts can help stimulate deeper conversations and connections which can lead to a feeling of increased joy, purpose and fulfillment overall. I have heard from many of the members that being a part of this community has helped them feel less alone in the world and more supported overall. I think that through the Sisterhood of Discovery women’s circle, in particular, participants are often able to learn about one another’s life experiences and understand vastly different perspectives which help them to grow and develop as humans.

I think that each one of our experiences has the potential to help attendees see the world in a new way and broaden their horizons, if they are open to it. I have seen long-time members grow more confident, successful and worldly after having been a consistent participant. I always like to joke that ‘repeat exposure’ to the community has the side effect of inducing a larger group of female friends along with increased joy, purpose and fulfillment in life. The community has certainly had this effect on me, and I hope it may produce the results for others as well.

Challenges/Management:

?9. Have there been any challenges in organizing and managing a group with this mission? How have you overcome them?

There are many challenges in building a soul-aligned business, especially in an extremely capitalist and patriarchal society which prioritizes fast cash above all else. Most people who are entrenched in this system don’t understand what I am trying to create and have no desire to spend the time necessary to think about any sort of complex ideas or concepts, so it has often been hard to enlist support from friends, family and especially potential sponsors or funders - which becomes something of a self-perpetuating catch-22 style cycle. It’s hard to grow a business without any capital - while also hard to convince people to provide funding to a business with such slow growth. As a result, I have relied primarily on unpaid and organic marketing and word of mouth, which has presented many challenges in trying to increase revenue and profitability.

There has been a lot of blood, sweat and literal tears involved in building this community, and I have wanted to give up and throw in the towel many times. But I have overcome the set-backs and frustrations by consistently returning to my “why” and remembering the reasons I started this community in the first place. I have learned to be very patient, make a lot of financial sacrifices and accept the fact that the majority of people will misunderstand and misjudge me and this community.

I have had to learn to trust myself and my vision despite the doubters and naysayers and put faith in myself and those who believe in me. I have been able to keep going due to my sheer belief in the necessity and power of both the arts and female camaraderie — and my passion for the work that I do.

Expansions/Other Initiatives:

10. Do you also manage a group in LA? Could you tell us about that?

I started to build Women of Culture in LA primarily because I love that city and have often felt pulled to spend more time there. It also has an incredibly rich art scene which has been consistently underrated and often overlooked, so I love the idea of helping people discover and connect to its wealth of cultural institutions and creatives. I currently host about one event there per month, and I have ‘Art-full Ambassadors’ on the ground who serve as the point of contact for those events when I can’t be there in person.

?11. I understand there is a program called "Sisterhood" - could you tell us about this?

The Sisterhood of Discovery is primarily held online and is something I first birthed in the Summer of 2020, when the art world was at a bit of a standstill, and it was hard for us to gather in-person as we had done in the past.

It is essentially a women’s circle designed to reinforce our company values of curiosity, empathy and discovery and to help participants connect to themselves and one another on a deeper level, employing guided meditations, journaling and carefully curated conversations to foster increased solidarity and support among attendees.

I have been a participant in many women’s circles in the past, one of which served as the inspiration for my starting Women of Culture, so I am a big believer in their power. The Sisterhood has been through a few iterations and incarnations, but it is currently hosted online via zoom on the middle Monday of every month. It is hosted on a drop-in basis so that participants can attend as many (or as few) of the monthly sessions as they like, though of course the biggest transformations and deepest connections come from repeat attendance over time.

Joining/Participating:

12. How does one join or try out an event with the "Women of Culture" group?

I always recommend that people attend one of our online intro night sessions.

If they enjoy these one-off experiences, the best way to get the most out of the community is to join as an Art-full member, which can be done on a monthly basis through our website here.

I hope to welcome some of your readers to our events as well as to the membership!

Thank you Alex for introducing everyone to Women of Culture. Whether you are new to the city or looking for a new experience I encourage you to check it out. To reach Alex on LinkedIn @https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/alexharper as well https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/womenofculture

?Also, fall is moving time, so if you have a question or two or are looking for an agent, just reach out! Let's get some culture together!

Suzanne