Connect communities, amplify artists, and spark collaboration.
Rock Rising is an artist-focused media production company that amplifies artists in practical ways, finds meaningful connections for philanthropists, and sparks collaboration among artists in our community. We produce important stories and original ideas and are a home-base and community for creatives.
Michael Alan Johnson
Creative Director
Julie Drexler Johnson
Executive Director
Shavonne Burns
Social Media Manager
Benjamin Bingham
Technical Director
We produce for the artists’ sake first and serve as a home-base and community for creatives. Our aim is excellence - both in the product we make and in our treatment of artists.
Our production work is focused on live events, creating original theater, and finding individualized ways to feature artists in our community at pop-up parties. We love our artists!
It is hard to make a living as an artist and it is staggering how many artists are asked to work for free, or worse, they have to “pay to play”! Rock Rising seeks to fundamentally flip this model by championing artists with unencumbered support. At Rock Rising, artists always get paid to work. We are committed to elevating artists above the bottom line and work hard to raise money so that we can fairly pay artists to tell their stories and express their point of view.
Rock Rising cares deeply about its artists. They are not just producers, they are your biggest fans, who want to make sure that you and your art are being honored and amplified exactly the way you always imagined it. - Mary Clohan (playwright)
When we first set out to create Rock Rising, our team longed for a connected community in creative spaces. Real community support was our original goal since the artists’ life can be so isolated. We wondered if we could become a home-base for artists in our network and sought to be that. Once we set our focus on prioritizing artists in this way, we found meaningful production work right in front of us and our community began to grow robustly. It certainly didn’t take long to find a need among artists that we could meet directly.
We intentionally foster spaces to pursue collaboration and friendship with our artist network. Artists are treated with respect, paid fairly, and stay at the center of our projects as we bring their ideas to life. This is the guiding philosophy of our company’s operations.
The chances that an individual artist will find support are quite slim, and even less so for marginalized voices. Our society is set up such that consumers don’t want to pay for content so artists make things for free, or worse, they have to “pay to play”! This construct serves the privileged few and certainly does not help marginalized voices. We want to fundamentally flip this model and champion artists with unencumbered support.
Our name “Rock Rising” represents our belief that real artistic collaboration can build solid community and improve the art-making along the way. We are a nonprofit production company who connect people from a variety of creative disciplines, amplify artists in practical ways, and spark collaboration with our community.
