Creative Washtenaw hosts a Happy Hour event once a month, which serves as a networking event for creatives based in the area.
The next Happy Hour will be Wednesday, July 29, 2026 at River Raisin Distillery in Manchester, from 4:30-6 p.m.
Creative Washtenaw is a membership-based professional association for artists or a chamber of commerce that serves artists across Washtenaw County. It serves as Washtenaw County's arts advocacy and resource organization with the goal of creating connections between people doing creative work in Washtenaw County, said Chloe Crowther, executive director at Creative Washtenaw.
Anyone is able to become a member with Creative Washtenaw individually or as an organization or business. According to its website, individual memberships are $35 a year for students and first-time members. Non-students will pay $55 a year after their first year. Memberships for creative businesses scale up in price based on the businesses operating budget ranging from $55 a year to $495 a year. Creative Washtenaw also offers ally business memberships for non-creative businesses that want to support the arts. Ally memberships range from $100 a year to $7,500 a year.
Membership includes access to professional connections, a spot in the member directory, opportunities like auditions and calls for art, increased visibility on social media platforms and networking events like the Creative Washtenaw Happy Hour.
Happy Hour is a monthly networking event that happens on the fourth Wednesday of every month from 4:30-6 p.m. The event is open to both members and non-members. If someone attends Happy Hour and wishes to become a member at Creative Washtenaw, they can be signed up right at the event. Happy Hour is open to anyone of any creative background including visual artists, writers, musicians, craft makers and any other creative discipline.
"Usually, it is a networking event in its truest sense. It is a lot of just free-form conversation, but at a certain point in the evening, we all kind of circle up and we announce any upcoming projects, or events that are of interest to the rest of the group. And people find that really valuable, so I always leave feeling really inspired hearing what everybody's working on, and we get a really good cross-section of all the different communities in Washtenaw County, and those people have an opportunity to get in front of the audiences that will engage with their work," Crowther said. "It is a low-stress environment without a whole lot of stakes. You don't even have to share if you don't want to."
Happy Hour is hosted at a different location in Washtenaw County each month. The location of the next event is posted to the Creative Washtenaw website after the current month's event has passed.
"We are making an intentional effort to make sure that we host them in all of the Washtenaw County communities. Obviously, there are a lot more businesses concentrated in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, but we make sure that every other month we make it out to one of those other municipalities in the county," Crowther said.
