Ronel Chery is kickstarting his media career with the creation of Blind Eye, a student-run collective that brings creatives together across campus.
“Blind Eye Collective is a group of students I put together on campus full of people from different creative disciplines,” sophomore Ronel Chery said. “I have poets, painters, actors, people that edit videos, people that do graphics. It’s just a space for creatives on campus.”
Chery established Blind Eye at the start of the fall semester as a space for student creatives to collaborate and connect. It’s attracted nearly 12,000 followers on TikTok at @blindeyecollective since its August launch.
The collective hosts public events called Dorm Jockeys every Friday evening, featuring a rotating group of performers and DJs. Event details are posted on the collective’s Instagram, @blindeyecollective.
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“We have a Dorm Jockeys event that we have every Friday, we have different talents come in and DJ for us,” he said. “We once had a food vendor come in and sell their food. Just setting up events and curating whatever goes up on the profile pages.”
Chery, a digital media design major, runs the group’s social media and oversees production. He said Blind Eye was created partly in response to difficulty landing internships without a degree.
“Whenever I was applying to internships, they would tell me how extensive my portfolio is, but because I don’t have my degree, they can’t hire me,” he said. “So I got tired of the same response, and I decided to make my own little brand and see where it takes me.”
Nathan South, a senior who manages his own collective, Compound, helped Chery establish Blind Eye by sharing advice from his experience.
“I’ve been working on setting up my own creative collective for a few years now…establishing it as a club on campus,” South said. “He reached out to me last summer telling me he was interested in starting his own collective, and I thought it would be great to help him out with it.”
South is graduating in the spring, but he hopes Blind Eye continues expanding its reach within the local arts scene.
“We’ve put together four shows and made connections with other collectors and venues,” he said. “I think by the time I pass it off, he could be established with a good network of artists, vendors, venues and doing shows and creative workshops…for artists.”
According to Chery, one of the key principles of Blind Eye is networking.
“Once you’re linking up with other creatives or other musicians, you’re gonna end up building a small community, and it only builds day by day,” he said. “Finding other people that do what you do is really important because you never know who they know.”
Freshman Mason Nguyen, a rapper, performed at a Dorm Jockeys event and said it helped expand his reach.
“Connecting with Blind Eye helped me connect with a lot of cool people, like DJs, photographers, editors, I kind of built a little network,” Nguyen said. “Nel [Chery] would repost my stuff sometimes too. It’s just nice to have a live performance under my belt.”
In addition to organizing events, Chery is developing branded merchandise, including designer T-shirts released March 1. He is also producing a short film series to promote its launch.
“I’m working on a short series called Detour…I was trying to put together little episodes of us marketing the shirt together,” Chery said. “That’s a big step for me, because this is my first time working with cameras. I usually stay on the postproduction and graphic side.”
Though the collective is still in its early stages, Chery said he plans to let the project flow naturally as different opportunities emerge.
“I don’t know what direction I want to go with it, whether it be a media company or a music label or a clothing brand,” Chery said. “I’m not going to put Blind Eye in a box at the end of the day, so whatever happens, happens.”