A Little Rock-based nonprofit is partnering with The Momentary to host a free monthly happy hour aimed at queer community building. Viktoria Capek is the founder of the Dropping Hairpins Project, the nonprofit arm of the event platform she and her wife run. She says the talks of doing a monthly event in Bentonville came about before the nonprofit did.
Capek: Also around the time we were doing our first Northwest Arkansas event last year, a representative from The Momentary who worked with their adult programming between Crystal Bridges and The Momentary had reached out to us and was like, 'Hey, there might be an opportunity here.' Didn't really have anything solid in mind, but we set up a call with her, and at the time discussed the opportunity of a Hairpins New Year's event at The Momentary. Obviously that didn't come to plan, but this specific person — who was also a member of our community — she ended up going on to a different job, but she really wanted to see this sort of programming happen through Crystal Bridges and The Momentary in some way. So she made sure to introduce us to their director of adult programs and other programming coordinators. And through many, many meetings with them, we ended up discussing different pathways that we could engage the queer community in Northwest Arkansas.
From the beginning, every conversation that we had with them, Crystal Bridges and The Momentary were very forthcoming about wanting to work with us because of how passionate they are about creating an open space where the queer community in Northwest Arkansas — and really all of Arkansas and the surrounding areas — feel comfortable to not just exist, but really form relationships and grow in those spaces.
That was a super green flag to us, because one of our main goals as we expand this nonprofit arm of Hairpins is to really intentionally partner with organizations that share the same mission of loudly creating these spaces for the queer community to find one another.
So after talks of figuring out what was right, one of the things we brought to them was this idea of a Hairpins Happy Hour. Super low lift, really. It doesn't reinvent the wheel in any sort of way, but it is taking an offshoot of the nightlife pop-up programming we do under the for-business side and creating a very low-barrier, accessible sort of programming for people to find one another. They already had their Roadhouse Happy Hour series going on at The Momentary monthly on Wednesdays, and through this initiative to be as open to as many communities as possible, that's where they were like, 'This is a really good opportunity for us to partner with Hairpins. We would love to do this with you — if you want to be a part of a certain Wednesday every month and have this be Hairpins night.' We loved that idea because it allowed people from 5 to 9 every second Wednesday within our community to go to The Momentary and enjoy free music, free programming and just find one another for no ticket cost. Low barrier, very easy, accessible relationship building for the community.
Moore: And repeatable. I mean, the fact that, like, maybe you can't make it to the second Wednesday in March, you know, it's going to happen again in April.
Capek: That 100% is it. Yes, yes. Through our pop-ups we were doing under the for-business model, finding the right partners and the right cadence to have these events has been more of an uphill battle than we initially expected. We've been able to have enough programming that I think has been really fruitful for the community over the past two years, but having that low-barrier, accessible programming that is repeatable monthly — knowing every second Wednesday of the month it is going to happen — is so important to the queer community, because if they're not able to make one, they can make another. And that's just important for relationship building.
Moore: When you think about impact, what are the deliverables you hope to have achieved through a monthly program like this a year from now?
Capek: From an operational standpoint, one of the things we are currently working on is working with community liaisons. As we are based in Central Arkansas, it is not always the easiest for us to get up into Northwest Arkansas despite wanting to make sure we have expansive programming in that area. So a real measure of impact in one year of us hosting programming like this — repeatably, on the operations side — is having a community liaison or a city manager operating Northwest Arkansas nonprofit events such as the Hairpins Happy Hours in a way that represents Hairpins to its full extent and continues to allow growth of the nonprofit programs without having direct founder hands on the program.
Externally, I would say it's just a program that people talk about. It lives in the zeitgeist. We want people to know that 'Hey, this Wednesday at The Momentary is Hairpins night — are you going?' We just want people to be able to casually show up somewhere and be able to find someone that looks like them, that shares the same sort of cultural world as them. That was always our initial vision when it came to Hairpins, and through a really accessible program like this, that vision is finally coming to fruition two years later.
And then the last one I would say is just opening up other opportunities. Something we were so excited about with working with The Momentary is they are a very large, very credible institution. And in our minds, as such a new organization, for them to take on the opportunity to work with us and really see the sort of impact that we are having and the impact that we can have as organizations together meant so much to us. We're hoping that other organizations and cultural institutions around the state — and frankly, around the country — will start to see, 'Hey, this organization Hairpins, they're doing really good things for the queer community.' Those would be the big three, I'd say, a year from now.
Moore: I think for me — and maybe you can resonate with this as someone who's a former journalist, recovering journalist if you want to put it that way — the sign of success is when someone else is sharing my story with another person. It sounds like that's what I'm hearing from you too: 'Hey, I'm going to this thing, you should too.'
Capek: Yeah, that's really it. It's so funny because two years ago when we had this idea, we were so adamantly against any sort of programming that was beyond nightlife or bar pop-ups. We would have people come to us and say, 'Hey, why don't you do this picnic, or why don't you do this craft night?' And our response was always, 'We would love to see that happen — we encourage you to find people at our events and make that happen.' And although we have kind of shifted from that mindset and we are in the business of making that happen now, so to speak, we have never let go of the idea of wanting to use Hairpins as a catalyst for the community to go create more and to find more community through the people and experiences they meet at Hairpins. We want people to come and create memories and make stories and share the gospel of Hairpins, so to speak, if it resonates with them.
Moore: Viktoria, anything I missed?
Capek: The last thing I would just mention is the other major programming we're seeking to start in Northwest Arkansas under the nonprofit this year, which is going to be our queer leadership network called Pinpoint. We have information on our website about that. It is essentially queer business owners, nonprofit leaders, creatives and professionals — giving them a monthly space to come together, network with one another and really defeat entrepreneurial and business isolation amongst queer professionals in the area. We've already launched that in Central Arkansas, and through work with a local community liaison, we are going to launch that in Northwest Arkansas by the second half of the year.
Viktoria Capek is the founder of the Dropping Hairpins Project. The first Hairpins Happy Hour is scheduled for March 11 from 5 to 9 p.m. in the Roadhouse at The Momentary.
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