jumpslide

Erin

Erin Potts is a pioneer of innovative social change strategies, a producer of award-winning cultural events and products, and an organizer of unusual–but potent–groups of change makers.

Erin’s work started in the 1990s when she co-founded the Milarepa Fund and the large-scale benefit concert series, the Tibetan Freedom Concerts, with the Beastie Boys. Since then, she has established and led several other nonprofits, including Revolutions Per Minute—a nonprofit agency that supports over 1,300 musicians and comedians making change and has become a model for artist engagement and cultural strategy.

Over her twenty-five year career of working with artists and nonprofits, Erin has raised $20 million for important causes, including earned income strategies that have resulted in over $12 million in revenue. Her work has been featured in Billboard and The New York Times, and she has been nominated for several prestigious awards, including the Reebok Human Rights Award and the Charles Bronfman Prize.

Erin currently lives in New Orleans, where she continues her groundbreaking work as a consultant specializing in cultural and narrative strategies, including creative and content strategy, learning and evaluation, and professional coaching. She is frequently invited to give talks and lectures on the intersections of art, culture and change. She also runs a residency for artists and activists creating change. 

Big projects I’ve led:

• Futures Lab, working with storytellers to tell better stories about the future

• The Storytellers’ Guide to Changing the World and Field Companion, Culture Surge

• Spotlight on Impact Storytelling: Mapping and recommendations for the narrative and cultural strategies ecosystem, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

• Cultural Audit for Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation study of Poverty Narratives in Pop Culture

• Cultural Audit for Story at Scale

• The Jumpslide Artist & Activist Residency

• A More Perfect Story

• The Midwest Culture Lab

• Senior Fellow, Pop Culture Collaborative

• Revolutions Per Minute

• Dear New Orleans

• The Culture Group

• Making Waves

• Tibetan Freedom Concerts

• Free Tibet, the movie

• The Milarepa Fund

• Parenting two crazy, wonderful children

Select Publications:

All Medium articles can be found here.

The Storytellers’ Guide to Changing the World 2.0 and Field Companion. By Erin Potts and Kirk Cheyfitz.

This Beautiful Moment: Our Latest Report on Impact Storytelling. A report that maps and gives recommendations to the field of narrative and cultural strategies. By Erin Potts, Dom Lowell and Liz Manne.

At The Speed of Trust. Five ways to strengthen our narrative rapid response power. By Erin Potts and Tracy Van Slyke.

Hard to Make a Song ‘Bout Something Other than the Money, A Cultural Audit on Popular Music and Poverty

Expanding Visions of Gender in Popular Culture, a cultural audit

Culture Matters (author of chapter on earned income & cultural products)

“Musicians as Allies in Social Change”

Musicians Lend Their Creativity to Register Voters

The Many Crises of Nepal February 23, 2016

Select Interviews:

• “The Anti-Woodstock ’99”: An Oral History of the Tibetan Freedom Concert

• How we erased over $2m in medical debt in New Orleans

  • CNN: How ordinary citizens are wiping out millions of dollars in medical debt for others -- and how you can, too

  • The Times Picayune/Advocate: $1.9M in medical debt will be erased thanks to New Orleans fundraiser, bake sale

• Interview on PRI/ The World on Yauch's passing 

•  PRI interview on music & social change

• From Freeing Tibet to Rebooting Judaism

• A Benevolent Impresario / Erin Potts creates a show for Tibet

• Fast Company on the Tibetan Freedom Concerts