Today we’d like to introduce you to Jeannine Erasmus and Denise Gunte.
Hi Jeannine and Denise, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
We met a long, long time ago in our high school art class. We both went our separate ways for university and then grad school and spent time both abroad and in different states. Last year, Denise moved back to Raleigh, and we got together to catch up over coffee. As an artist and educator, both in transition phases of our lives, we talked about our steady and ever-present love of art. We dreamed of a space in between, where creativity and community collide, where everyone, big and little, can express their curiosities and selves through art.
A Great Good Space is that space in between. As for the name? It comes from our favorite book, “A Great Good Place” by Ray Oldenburg, where he talks adamantly about the significance of accessible and informal gathering spaces in our everyday public life. The places in between [third spaces] where we find each other and ourselves. As Oldenburg describes it, “A place that is a leveler is, by its nature, an inclusive place.” This is the space we work to create.
With this mission in mind and in the short life of a Great Good Space, we’ve hosted craft clubs for all ages, facilitated workshops, designed kits for pop-up markets, collaborated with creative partners, and developed one very big, small city as an interactive public art installation for a local event. We can’t go without mentioning our good friend and collaborator, Nick Neptune, as well as the Dix Park Conservancy, who were some of our first and continue to be our most fervent supporters.
We’re thrilled to be working with some of our best friends and community organizers to continue bringing art + play to our every day in 2024!
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The overarching challenges mostly come down to 2 things: time and the fact that a Great Good Space is just us, Jeannine and Denise; we’re a mighty team, but a small team.
We plan, create, and facilitate every art experience. Each experience is different, and because of that, there is so much planning that happens behind the scenes. (Shout out to Boulted Bread for keeping us caffeinated, and Denise’s 12 years of teaching experience, and Jeannine’s 8 years of running her own small illustration business for keeping us on our toes!)
When we’re not developing informal art experiences, we’re sourcing and preparing materials, connecting with local organizations and community leaders. We have some background in marketing and public programming, so we’ve developed our own site logo and send out our newsletters. And then there’s the part that we’d say is our steepest learning curve: the admin. But we’re learning as we go and thankful to have each other. However, these obstacles have made us cherish and appreciate what we’ve started to build at a Great Good Space. Like ourselves, a Great Good Space is flexible, understanding, and responsive, not only to the needs of those who participate in any of our art-making experiences but also with each other.
A Great Good Space, in a way, has helped us be kinder to ourselves and more engaged in our everyday lives. It’s become a space where we feel at home. It’s what we hope it feels like to everyone else, too. If we had a mission or overall goal, that might be it.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
We are, to put it simply, a community art studio where anyone of any age can create great things. We work closely with small businesses and local organizations to bring accessible art + workshops to our community. Through the form of pop-up events, we partner with a business or organization to create a unique art experience for their audience. As social practice artists, we really love making art that tells a story about our current environments and lived experiences. Last summer, we created a city out of recycled materials for In Situ Studio’s “Real Matter” event, where we asked participants the question, “What makes a space accessible?”. They were then invited to share their responses on provided post-it notes that then they could add anywhere to our little cardboard city. The end result was both informative and inspiring.
But also, what we do can look like many things: at local pop-ups, designing + facilitating art-making workshops, community partnerships, interactive public art (installations), organizing events, and we’ve just started to do a little creative consultation work too.
We specialize in collaborating with our community partners to help create those spaces in between, or what we like to call “designing a good space.” “A Good Space” is a temporary curated making space that provides comfort, friendship, and a place to nurture the creative voice of those participating in it. We work with you to define your message and design a space to meet your audience’s needs, and when it’s ready, we facilitate the experience for you. Our idea is unique in that we encourage folks to think and continue to think about the experience once it ends. Before every event, we design reflection cards with the goal of helping participants (our great good artists) discover something new, whether it’s something about themselves or their environment. In particular, when working with Early Childhood learners, these cards also provide grown-ups with different ways to start conversations with their little ones about their art and/or what they’ve made. Whether you’re talking with a child or simply encouraging yourself, the best advice we have is just to remember that there is no right or wrong way to make art; just as long as it makes you happy or feel proud, that’s all that matters.
Thinking about us as a brand feels so different from what a Great Good Space has turned out to be. With that said, we feel more like an experience: an open community space where everyone is welcome to come in, stop by, visit. A Great Good Space isn’t a brand. It’s a shared place for you and me to have time to be with each other and make things. This is the environment we work to create every time we do anything; so far, we’ve felt successful in translating this sentiment into an accessible space. This is what we’re most proud of and what we’d like the readers to know. We will also emphasize that anytime we have an event, please know that you don’t have to know anyone to show up. Need a friend, come on by! We’re certain, from what we’ve seen in the past, you can come by yourself and leave with a new friend or five.
In the meantime, stay tuned for our upcoming 2024 events! We’ll be starting back up this March. Follow us on Instagram @agreatgoodspace and/our subscribe to our newsletter on Substack for updates and where to find us next.
Thank you for meeting us here; see you there!
Xoxo,
Jeannine and Denise
Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc.?
Favorite books/apps/podcasts
Books:
– “A Great Good Place” by Ray Oldenburg
– “Art as Experience” by John Dewey
– “Releasing the Imagination” by Maxine Greene
– “Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency” by Olivia Laing
Podcasts/Apps:
One of our favorite apps at the moment, I don’t know if it counts as an app, but the “voice notes” feature in text. Since our everyday looks very different between the two of us and we don’t always have time to meet in person on a regular schedule, a truly large part of how a Great Good Space operates is because of voice notes. I don’t know when we started using them, but we haven’t looked back since.
With that being said, if you’re wondering how often we use them, we now just refer to voice notes as our podcast. The name changes all the time, but we talk a lot about embroidering our future podcast name on a sweater most of the time. Limited editions will never be released lol, but if Voice Notes want to sponsor us let us know 🙂
Instagram accounts we follow for inspiration:
@shelfeditions
@leamaupetit
@jeffkasperstudio
@projectopendoor
@littlehouseartstherapy
@smallschoolraleigh
@kellianderson
@childish.books
@theconcernnewstand
@theslowfactory
@marleegrace
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.agreatgoodspace.com/
- Instagram: instagram.com/agreatgoodspace
- Other: https://substack.com/@agreatgoodspace?utm_source=profile-page
Image Credits
A Great Good Space
