A native of Bridgeport, Connecticut, Edwards came to Atlanta in the 1990s at the urging of his parents, hoping the relocation would help him escape what they saw as a bleak future for him in the city. Attending Atlanta Metropolitan College and meeting key city movers in those formative years altered what he believed was possible.
Today Edwards is a filmmaker whose career includes production work on current films and television programs taped in Atlanta, including Kevin Hart’s “Fight Night,” the ABC drama series “Will Trent,” and a variety of projects filmed at Tyler Perry Studios.
This city still allows him to go beyond anything he imagined when he arrived, he said. “Atlanta, to me, is a microcosm for Black culture,” said Edwards. “It really is the place where you can come and see Black people’s best and worst, where you can see the problem and the solution.”
Ford, who came from Brooklyn in 1999 to attend Morehouse College as an entrepreneurial-minded pre-med student, agreed that Atlanta offered him more possibilities than what was available to him in the Empire State.
“Back home in New York, I would have to check-in with a bunch of gatekeepers and pay a bunch of dues. And at the time, in Atlanta, you could walk into some place and be like ‘I want to do something’ and they’d take you seriously.”
Ford, who works in Atlanta’s technology and creative agency communities as a project manager and consultant, began his cultural-entrepreneurial journey in Atlanta through his involvement in two legendary reoccuring parties in the early 2000s. “Sloppy Seconds,” which Ford said welcomed all races through a mixture of diverse music and people, catered to the burgeoning hipster nightlife scene of Atlanta in the aughts. Another event, titled “Broke & Boujee,” served as what Ford called “a safe space for Black, weird people” — one that, at the time, represented Atlanta’s community of cool kids coming into their own.
“We all had…
Read the full article here
