After a couple weeks on the road, the latest ATF mini-tour came to a smashing close last night in Brooklyn. The good folks at Playground Detroit– a NYC-based non-profit who are drawing ties between the Big Apple and the Motor City– were gracious hosts and brought in a nice crowd with all kinds of interesting questions afterwards. Once again, the Q+A lasted longer than the film itself– a sure sign that something about the film is resonating with people. After stops down south and now in the Northeast, it’s good to wrap things up with an empire state of mind, and head back to the homeland. Home is where the heart is.

Check out some photos from the road, a visual journal of the last couple weeks of our little Detroit roadshow.

Campus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

A room full of incredibly smart MIT’ers watching ATF

From big brains to the big apple. NYC!

Promo posters spotted in Bushwick for our Brooklyn screening

A blurry Brooklyn crowd. Cool venue!

Graffiti in Brooklyn. Call your mom for Mothers Day this weekend!

See you back in Detroit, can’t wait to get back home. We have some cool work to be rolling out in the next few weeks!

Been on the road the last few days screening “After the Factory” in New Orleans and Austin tonight. We’ve been having some good conversations– in NOLA, particularly about looking at the devastation via Katrina and how folks from Detroit/NOLA can learn from each other in there ability to see through the struggle. Powerful stuff. Tonight will be great to have another film added to the bill in “Lemonade: Detroit”, directed by Erik Proulx. Next week we’re in Boston (MIT!) and NYC (see all the dates here). As I move along via trains and planes, I can’t help but think about coming home and getting back to work– in a good way.

DL! has been growing up these days. What started with creative work doing projects of our own (t-shirts, murals, films, etc) has morphed in to a situation where now people are coming to us to design stuff for them. I kind of like to think of DL! these days as a creative agency and social brand. We’ve grown a ton in the last 4 months or so taking on about 300% more work than we did last year. That’s pretty cool. And it’s leading to us being able to take bigger steps in the community which is obviously important– like building that race car track for the kids at the Georgia Street Community Garden.

But all I can think about is more! MORE! How can we continue to grow, to be inventive with the way we blur the lines between a traditional creative agency and a social brand. The next step of course is getting space– an office. And all I can think about is how we can put a refresher on the traditional agency model whereby it’s not just strictly production space where we make films for clients. What if it has some sort of user-generated component? What if it had a cafe attached to it with a performance space like 1515 Broadway? What if it became a hacker space where people could dissect content from pieces we developed to fuel their own projects across a variety of disciplines? What if the “office” became some form of a new-wave civic center pairing traditional consumer behavior (buying/selling) with philanthropy (commoditizing goodness)? At the end of the day, how can we create a valuable retail and experiential model abutted to that of a traditional ad agency? I know some of this stuff is vague, and slightly unclear. But that’s by design.

Stay tuned. How will DL! grow up and stay relevant by refreshing the way we do business and perhaps inventing a new “system” for others? I ask all these questions so that all of you can hold me accountable for moving forward with it down the road. And if you’ve got some thoughts– give me a jingle.

See you in Austin tonight if you can make it for the screening of “After the Factory” and “Lemonade: Detroit.” Tickets and info on the event (tonight, 7pm) here.

Ohhh baby, you wanna talk excitement? We’re hitting the road again with “After the Factory.” First stop? Tomorrow– in the culture capital of the south, no less. New Orleans! So pumped to be playing at the Zeitgeist Theatre, of which we found thanks to Alan at Civic Center– a really great organization doing some pretty unique and innovative stuff in NOLA.

After a stint in NOLA, we’re headed to Austin-town, Texas where we are more than honored to be screening as a double feature alongside the likes of Erik Proulx, director of “Lemonade: Detroit“, the film you’ve certainly heard about in the last year. We are screening at Austin Studios, part of the Austin Film Society, on May 2 at 7pm. Tickets are only $5 so if you are in the area, you should really consider coming.

Then it’s off to see the big dogs at MIT where we will be doing a special screening on May 8 with various faculty members and students at one of the most prestigious research universities in the country. Again, we are so honored to even have the opportunity to screen the film and connect with some of the brightest minds that higher education can offer. After Boston and MIT, you guessed it, we’re off to the Big Apple.

If you can make it in NYC, you can make it anywhere, right? Well, we’re trying. We’re doing two screenings in the city, the first of which being at the offices of ?What if!, a really innovative consulting and creative agency that helps companies develop their brands and come up with cool ideas to roll out products. We are screening at their offices with a convo to follow about innovative distribution models in the film industry right now. Hopefully we’ll get some cool ideas on ways in which we can push the film forward. That following night we are then screening again alongside Erik Proulx and “Lemonade: Detroit.” Follow all the details at afterthefactoryfilm.com.

How’s that for some action. Ready, steady, GO!

I’m currently sitting in Paris at Charles de Gaulle Airport waiting for the airplane back home. So, the screening tour has come to a delightful close.

A few things to note:

1) Yesterday we released the latest video in the Speakers Bureau, a collection of content we are developing for the Detroit Creative Corridor Center. This week we feature Noah Stephens and his photo docucumentary “The People of Detroit.” Without further ado:

2) The rest of the film screening tour finished wonderfully in the Netherlands. We had a great time hanging with the guys from SocialBeta in Heerlen– a town that has also been hard with the loss of their mining industry. More on that later when I have a few moments to distill some of the things we talked about.

3) Perhaps most importantly, I am hoping to announce another local screening of “After the Factory” in Detroit real soon.

Time to get on the plane, can’t wait to be back in Detroit.