Ronel Chery is kickstarting his media career with the creation of Blind Eye, a student-run collective that brings creatives together across campus.<\/p>\n
\u201cBlind Eye Collective is a group of students I put together on campus full of people from different creative disciplines,\u201d sophomore Ronel Chery said. \u201cI have poets, painters, actors, people that edit videos, people that do graphics. It\u2019s just a space for creatives on campus.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chery established Blind Eye at the start of the fall semester as a space for student creatives to collaborate and connect.\u00a0 It\u2019s attracted nearly 12,000 followers on TikTok at @blindeyecollective since its August launch.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s Instagram, @blindeyecollective.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe have a Dorm Jockeys event that we have every Friday, we have different talents come in and DJ for us,\u201d he said. \u201cWe once had a food vendor come in and sell their food. Just setting up events and curating whatever goes up on the profile pages.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chery, a digital media design major, runs the group\u2019s social media and oversees production. He said Blind Eye was created partly in response to difficulty landing internships without a degree.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhenever I was applying to internships, they would tell me how extensive my portfolio is, but because I don\u2019t have my degree, they can\u2019t hire me,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I got tired of the same response, and I decided to make my own little brand and see where it takes me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nathan South, a senior who manages his own collective, Compound, helped Chery establish Blind Eye by sharing advice from his experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been working on setting up my own creative collective for a few years now\u2026establishing it as a club on campus,\u201d South said. \u201cHe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
South is graduating in the spring, but he hopes Blind Eye continues expanding its reach within the local arts scene.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve put together four shows and made connections with other collectors and venues,\u201d he said. \u201cI 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\u2026for artists.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to Chery, one of the key principles of Blind Eye is networking.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce you\u2019re linking up with other creatives or other musicians, you\u2019re gonna end up building a small community, and it only builds day by day,\u201d he said. \u201cFinding other people that do what you do is really important because you never know who they know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Freshman Mason Nguyen, a rapper, performed at a Dorm Jockeys event and said it helped expand his reach.<\/p>\n
\u201cConnecting with Blind Eye helped me connect with a lot of cool people, like DJs, photographers, editors, I kind of built a little network,\u201d Nguyen said. \u201cNel [Chery] would repost my stuff sometimes too. It\u2019s just nice to have a live performance under my belt.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m working on a short series called Detour\u2026I was trying to put together little episodes of us marketing the shirt together,\u201d Chery said. \u201cThat\u2019s a big step for me, because this is my first time working with cameras. I usually stay on the postproduction and graphic side.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though the collective is still in its early stages, Chery said he plans to let the project flow naturally as different opportunities emerge.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know what direction I want to go with it, whether it be a media company or a music label or a clothing brand,\u201d Chery said. \u201cI\u2019m not going to put Blind Eye in a box at the end of the day, so whatever happens, happens.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ronel Chery is kickstarting his media career with the creation of Blind Eye, a student-run collective that brings…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210],"class_list":["post-239251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}