Just what is The Buffalo Hive? Well, we’re a nonprofit online journalism startup dedicated to covering the arts and culture of Buffalo and the entire Western New York region. We’re going to provide the region’s best events calendar and the region’s best reportage on those topics. That’s the short answer.

You can read our longer description HERE.

Our goals encompass a lot of things. We plan to be a community hub, a meeting place where the communities of the region come together. Where there is meaningful debate of the issues affecting our arts and culture. Where we let people know what is happening, but also discuss what it means.

Hence, the “Hive” part of the name, as in the “hive mind” concept.

For today, though, the best explanation of what The Buffalo Hive is may just be a list of our current and upcoming features:

• Our calendar:
  It already has hundreds of events on it, with oh so many more to come. As an example of what we can do, we’ve got the entire schedule for the Buffalo Infringement Festival, which includes hundreds of performances between July 25 and Aug. 4. They’re searchable and sortable, by location, categories. It’s also one of the most wide-ranging and fun events in Buffalo every year! We’re excited to collaborate with them. If you’re involved in an arts or community event, you can submit them for the calendar HERE.
  
  In the next week to 10 days, you can expect to see stories, previews or reviews on:
• The 50th anniversary of Artpark
• The Buffalo Philharmonic’s recordings of compositions by Lukas Foss, the BPO’s groundbreaking musical director from 1963 to 1970.
• Food writer Andrew Galarneau on things he thought about writing about restaurants, but decided they might be a bit … too direct.
• A preview of the National Comedy Center’s Lucille Ball Comedy Festival.
• Music writer Jeff Mier’s review of the Flaming Lips concert at Artpark.
• Melinda Miller’s review of the “Comedy of Errors” at Shakespeare in Delaware Park.
• A story on the free speech implications of the recent firing of a Buffalo DJ apparently for his social media posting.
• A preview story and lots of coverage of Infringement Festival happenings.
• Pieces of an ongoing writing series from writer, performer media artist Ron Ehmke.
• Looks at the art scene from Colin Dabkowski.
• Film reviews from M. Faust and Sarah Schwab.
• Some more things that we’re probably forgetting!
  
  Reports from our other collaborators, including:
• Monica Powers (daily music listings)
• Seamus Gallivan (his Reconnecter community building reports)
• R.D. Pohl (on Buffalo’s literary events).

We’re looking forward to working with the finest roster of freelancers and collaborators in Western New York as we build our coverage.

To to that, we’re going to need your support. Membership plans are in the works, but if you want to be among the first to offer you’re support, you can donate HERE through Arts Services Inc.(ASI). They’re our fiscal sponsor until we complete the 501(c)(3) process to become a federally recognized nonprofit (we’re already incorporated as a New York State nonprofit. Any donations through ASI are tax-deductible.

So, as you can see, we’ve got a lot ahead of us, and it’s time to get back to the work of making the best arts & culture journalism Buffalo and Western New York have to offer. Let us know what you think, what you’d like to see coverage and if you’d like to pitch in!

Elmer Ploetz
Editor-in-Chief

Frank Housh
Managing Editor