LOOP Youngstown wants to make it easier for the area’s arts community to connect with potential customers and collaborators.

The organization, which is working to create a community arts and cultural center in the area, started Linked on LOOP, a database where creatives can share their information.

Karen Schubert, director of Lit Youngstown and a member of LOOP Youngstown’s board of directors, said the idea was inspired by the artist markets that used to be at the Ward Bakery Building in Youngstown.

“I love that so much, but sometimes months later, I would think, ‘Oh, I have a gift I need to buy, I wish I could remember the name of that artist and how to get a hold of them,'” Schubert said. “It was sort of an idea I was kicking around, and once we started LOOP, I realized we had a platform and we could at least give it a try to raise visibility to give artists a chance to be found and to find each other.”

The website (loopyoungstown.org/linkedonloop) has six categories — visual artists, writers, musicians, actors, dancers and another — where people can submit a bio, a description of their work and / or background, a profile photo and up to three photographs or videos.

Artist, curator and designer Robyn Maas, who created the site, said it was configured with ease of use in mind.

“I thought, why not give everybody a URL so they can actually have a page,” Maas said.

“A lot of people don’t have the design skills to have a landing page for a website and all that. You can copy your URL and you could put it in your signature at the end of your email or whatever, and then you kind of have a web page.”

Those who do have their own website can use the Linked on LOOP profile to direct traffic there.

As more artists and performers take advantage of the site, Schubert said it could be used in multiple ways.

“To hire artists, to teach a class, to reach out to artists to commission or purchase work, or to hire musicians for some kind of an event,” Schubert said. “Really anything that a person might be looking for artists to do, hopefully they can find that. And if we’ve done our job right, we’ve cross-sectioned it so that it’s searchable in different ways.”

Maas added, “There’s a lot of local talent in my opinion, and I think that local talent deserves to be highlighted.”

Many artists and musicians have become increasingly dependent on social media to promote their work.

Those social media algorithms have started restricting the reach of those “non-promoted” (unpaid for) posts, and many people are abandoning those platforms as social and political discourse gets more divisive.

“I think that it’s more relevant in these times,” Maas said. “We decided to do this before all this change has happened, but I think it’s more important now than ever.”

Those in the creative arts can create pages free of charge, and it will remain that way for at least all of 2025.

LOOP Youngstown’s board continues to look for a permanent site that could provide studio spaces for individual artists, office / storage / rehearsal space for existing organizations, classrooms for instruction in art and other disciplines and / or a performance space for dance and theater groups. Once that site is established, being in the database could be included in whatever small membership fee LOOP might charge, Maas said.

“We don’t have all that set up yet,” she said. “We’re hoping that people will realize that they’re benefiting.”