Wilmington’s new Creative Hub brings artists, residents and small businesses together on the city’s West Side

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For years, Brian Wild had imagined having a creative space on Union Street.

The Wilmington filmmaker and artist has lived on the street for about a decade, but said opportunities to connect with other artists often seemed to happen elsewhere in the city. So when he was driving down Union Street one day and saw a sign announcing that a Creative Hub was coming to a vacant storefront, he immediately took notice.

The building was actually one Wild had once imagined using as his own studio.

“I immediately kind of introduced myself,” Wild said. “This is even before they were open.”

Wild eventually used the space to screen his latest short film, “For Delia, With Love,” bringing in a large screen and projector for the event. The Creative Hub helped him organize the screening, including providing snacks and popcorn, and the event drew a crowd.

For Wild, the value of the space goes beyond having somewhere to show a film. It gives artists an opportunity to find one another.

“As a filmmaker and an artist, I’ve always wanted a space on Union Street to kind of have an art gallery, [a] screening room,” Wild said. “It gives you a spot to meet other artists. As a filmmaker you’re in your own little bubble or your own little group. This really helped me at least kind of get out there and meet some new people and kind of collaborate with them.”

That connection is part of what Cornerstone West Community Development Corporation hoped to create when it opened the Creative Hub in April.

The space grew out of Westside Grows Together, a revitalization initiative working across Wilmington’s West Side. JaQuanne LeRoy Daniels, the Creative Hub’s co-manager and creative lead, said the project was created in response to several needs: connecting residents with arts and creativity, giving creatives a place to develop their work, and helping small businesses and artists strengthen their businesses.

“While there are other art organizations that we have access to here in the city, in this corridor specifically we do not have many places where people can go for creative outlet,” Daniels said.

The Creative Hub also helped Cornerstone West fulfill another priority, putting a vacant storefront to use.

“We were solving a lot of problems,” he said. “Not just the individual problem of we want to bring creativity to the community, but we also want to occupy a vacant storefront so that it brings a light to the people who are in this area.”

Since opening, the space has hosted a variety of events, including an open mic led by a West Side poet, a workshop connecting residents’ relationship with Delaware’s waterways to creativity through collage projects and a film screening featuring Wild and other local creatives.

The space has also partnered with organizations like the Delaware Division of the Arts, Delaware Division of Small Business and Wilmington Alliance for workshops and programming.

For Daniels, the goal is not simply to give people somewhere to attend an event. He wants the space to encourage people to pursue ideas that might otherwise feel out of reach — whether that means creating a piece of art, starting a business or taking an existing business to its next level.

“We really want to help inspire and offer resources to the people in this community and to creatives in this city to just be able to do those things that they have a vision and a hope to do,” Daniels said.

Wild said he has already experienced that connection first-hand. He said being around painters, musicians, photographers and other artists can expose filmmakers to ideas they might not encounter within their own creative circles.

“You never really know what can come out of putting creative people in the same room together,” Wild said.

That is also the larger vision Daniel and team has for the Creative Hub.

He said he hopes the space continues to grow and eventually becomes a model that could be replicated in other neighborhoods and communities — creating more places where residents, businesses and creatives can connect.

For now, the Creative Hub occupies one storefront on Union Street, giving artists like Wild a place to bring their work closer to home.