Art2U

Art2U is designed to foster engagement among artists. It emphasizes diversity and inclusion by spotlighting marginalized communities and providing a safe space for people to create and connect.

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Our creation is Art2U, a mobile platform designed to foster a community among artists while uplifting marginalized creators. On Art2U, users can explore their artistic expression by joining various communities based on their creative endeavors. These include communities centered on painting, music, weaving, and more. These spaces enable artists to easily collaborate with one another, forming safe spaces to share their artistic interests.

Unlike pre-existing platforms that mainly focus on promoting popular artists and content, Art2U aims to give everyone a fair opportunity to present their art to the world. By doing so, we strive to provide an equitable and safe space for all individuals to express their creativity and connect with like-minded artists. Our efforts were a combination of empathy, research, and purposeful design. Through our platform, we hope to build a vibrant, inclusive community where every artist feels valued and inspired to share their work.

Some of the main features of Art2U are its spotlight features, artist events, and communities. The spotlight features and artist events appear prominently on the home screen. Our surveys and competitive analysis indicated that artists often struggle to reach a larger audience, especially those in marginalized communities. They feel that algorithms work against them and favor artists with significant followings. Some even notice that their followers do not see their content. Every week, our platform showcases different communities of marginalized artists through the spotlight feature, including Indigenous artists, AAPI artists, and LGBTQ+ artists. Moreover, our app does not rank posts based on popularity. While it allows users to favorite art they find interesting, posts are always presented in chronological order.

Art2U also hosts artist events to meet user needs. Many survey participants indicated that they use social media as a medium for creative expression, not only to post their art but also to connect with others with similar interests. As a result, we incorporated artist events into Art2U. These events have common themes, such as "International Women's Day," where artists of any medium can post their art in the theme gallery. This allows people from different communities to come together. It also creates opportunities for artist collaborations, which many of our survey participants desired as part of their social or professional journey. Users can link their pre-existing works in a portfolio on Art2U, their other social media accounts, and their external websites. Our platform accommodates the tools that artists already use. It also allows artists to post collaboratively to foster group connections. While every artist can find their niche and community on Art2U, the platform welcomes all users as a group of people who simply love to create.

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