shesaid.so: Tell us a little more about yourself, and your career journey so far.
Kaitlyn: Hi! I’m Kaitlyn, a Canadian based in Lisbon via Berlin, New York and London. I got my start in the music industry helping out at a university radio station in Toronto while I was in high school, which led me to an artist and brand development company where I held roles across public relations and artist management. I was feeling the itch to engage with bigger markets and live outside of my hometown Toronto, and ended up moving to London, UK in 2016. My time in London started out with me working in film festivals, but I could sense I wanted to be back closer to music. Through a stroke of luck and good timing, I ended up in the Boiler Room offices (which is where I first got introduced to shesaid.so!). Boiler Room was a wild ride and I spent time in both the London and New York offices over the course of the next 2 years, while also working on summer music festivals back in Canada. My visa in the UK was coming to an end but I wasn’t ready to leave Europe, and decided to move to Berlin in 2018. In Berlin I switched from working primarily in events and marketing to the recorded music industry, where I spent time in the !K7 Records offices before landing in the digital content operations department at SoundCloud for three years.
While I was at SoundCloud, I started a collective, CO:QUO, with two amazing humans + fellow shesaid.so members, Mel Powell and PortraitXO. Our focus is to facilitate events, conversation and practice-based education across music, technology, art and science, and we’ve collaborated with artists, collectives, brands, and governmental funding bodies to bring our thinking to life. Operating at these intersections with CO:QUO and alongside some personal research, I inevitably ended up exploring blockchain and web3 technologies at the beginning of 2021. This research culminated in a series of digital events I produced with the collective exploring the future possibilities and limitations of technology for the music industry. This marked the beginning of my professional journey in the space, where I now work with and for two cultural DAO’s (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) Friends With Benefits and Refraction leading membership and curatorial partnerships, respectively. There is so much more to be said in between all of these lines, but an interest in the way humans, communities, art and technology interact has been the driving force behind what I do, why I move, and why I stay up late on the internet or at the rave.
shesaid.so: What do you consider some of your greatest career achievements, and why?
Kaitlyn: Although I’d consider CO:QUO more of a personal project than career achievement, starting the collective has opened so many doors and given me the opportunity to pursue ideas collaboratively. I’m so proud of the work we’ve done, from our first residency at the Night Embassy to our monthly radio show on Refuge Worldwide.
This summer, I had the pleasure of working on the programming team for the inaugural FWB FEST in Idyllwild, California. The extended Friends With Benefits fam gathered in the forest for some big discussions, wicked musical performance, and one of the most magical sunsets I’ve ever seen. Pulling off this event with our dream team, and receiving positive feedback from our community was a big career highlight.
Literally, the day after FWB FEST ended, our curatorial team at Refraction huddled up to begin decision making on our Creative Grants programme, which has been such a rewarding process from day dot. The programme has allowed us to decentralize our operations and collection, while supporting members of the DAO in realizing creative projects all over the world. The redistribution of capital and lowering barriers to entry are a huge part of why I decided to get involved in web3, and this project has helped drive that mission.
shesaid.so: What are some of the challenges you've faced, and how have they shaped you and your career?
Kaitlyn: I started in the industry pretty young and often found it hard for people to take me seriously. I won’t say those days are totally over, but I’ve grown into my various roles over the years and know how to stick up for myself after living and working through those interactions.
The music and creative industries are incredibly precarious and extractive. Taking on second (and third, and fourth) jobs, having projects fall through at the last minute, and the personal and nepotistic nature of the industry are all realities that can be very unkind to workers. Thankfully, these realities can have silver linings. Getting to work across disciplines, on varied projects, with people I’m lucky to call friends keeps me motivated.
