Who is writing this: Aaron C, Co-Founder of Idu House
Idu House turned last week.
Funny enough, we are Idu House and we don’t yet have a building. But, here we are.
Walk with me for a minute, because I want to paint a picture of what this year as looked like.
A year ago, Idu House mostly lived in long (long) conversations. The kind that start over dinner and end with somebody opening a shared doc at midnight. We kept coming back to the same idea: there should be a place where making great work and actually owning that work are not at odds with each other. Where artists can find collaborators, build careers that last, and have a real say in what happens to the things they make.
We had a name, a vision, and an almost embarrassing amount of ambition.
What we did not have was a track record.
So we got to work.
Over the past year we have been turning those conversations into things you can actually see, hear, and show up to. Crate Chronicles gave us a reason to sit down with creative people and listen to their stories. Sound Sessions gave us a reason to play music loud and get people in the same room. We took on production work. We started developing original stories of our own across film and animation.
And behind all of that, we have been working on the parts that never make it to a feed. Threshold (more to come), our theory on creative ownership and distribution, and the question of what it would actually take to build a company that supports a creator beyond one project.
I’m proud of everything we have done but I have also learned there is a very real difference between having an idea and bringing it to life.
If year one taught me anything, it’s that.
Because not everything went according to plan.
We had ideas we were excited about that did not land the way we expected. We planned an event and had to pull back from it, and that forced us to rethink what a meaningful community experience should actually feel like. Some projects took a lot longer than we hoped. A few priorities changed once we understood what the real cost. And, that’s more than just money.
There were plenty of moments when the ambition was moving faster than our ability to execute. That is a humbling thing to admit. It’s also a useful one.
You can have a beautiful vision for a house but you have to figure out how to build it.
That is what this first year was all about: you, the creators, artists, and idealists.
Somewhere along the way, our little corner of Instagram has grown to around 1,700 of you. People who simply believe there should be more room for independent creative work to thrive.
Some of you collaborated with us. Some of you offered advice we REALLY needed. Some of you shared our work or came out to support something we were trying for the first time and some of you have been quietly watching, waiting to see what we do next.
I see all of it and I appreciate all of it.
When you’re building something from the ground up, knowing other people see a reason for it to exist is not a small thing. Some days it’s the whole thing.
So what does year two look like?
More making.
We want to get more of our original work into the world and we want to create more rooms where creative people can meet, collaborate, and grow. We want to keep figuring out what real ownership and real support look like for creators, not in theory, in practice. And we want to keep laying the foundation for something that can eventually be much bigger than the projects we’re making right now.
We call Idu House a House of Beginnings.
One year in, that phrase means more to me than it did when we picked it. Because now I know what a beginning actually demands. It demands patience, wrong turns, work nobody sees and people who show up when there’s still very little to show them. We have a lot left to learn and an enormous amount left to build but we have more to show today than we did a year ago and I’m proud of that.
To everyone who has been here for any part of this first year, thank you. I hope you stick around. There’s a lot we want to share with you.
And if you’re a creator, I’d love to hear what you’re working on. Seriously. Hit reply. Tell me what you’re making, what you’re dreaming up, or what you wish existed to help you bring it to life.
After all, the whole point of building a house is to have people in it.
Talk soon.