About Local Artist Network
“In my limited life on this planet, I have seen the promise of success for the creatives come and go.
I am on a lifelong mission to change that.”
Local Artist Network is being built in Boulder: a network that puts local creators on screens around town, carries what is happening tonight, and pays the people who make it. This page is about why, and who is behind it.
The person behind this
Grig Bilham
He started as a classical violinist, took up jazz piano in high school, and in his senior year founded a psychedelic rock band that played together for over twenty years. The band moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he ran a sound system, a music label and a digital download store, wrote and produced for the band, and performed his own solo electronic music. After two decades there, he came back to Boulder, Colorado.
That is a working life spent inside the creative economy, and it is where the argument comes from. In his own account the promise of success for creators came and went, until even the most highly regarded musicians — listened to billions of times a year — were earning a fraction of what had once been possible.
“there are moments where I realize, oh wait, this is what I've wanted to do all along, even though I didn't know it for a long time... solving the problem that I had when I was trying to be a musician 20 years ago, and then I created that digital download store, all the way up till now... underneath all of that was the same desire to help everyone so they could have a better experience than I did by understanding it and engineering the solutions.”
“I find myself brought to tears by the true expression of the human soul.”
“I have worked with and met incredible creators all over the world... From superstar DJs, and visionary painters creating "high art", to unknown creative talent at festivals, street corners, and online. everyone I speak to seems to have the same needs. They need to be able to live, be discovered, and be part of the world around them.”
“my mission is to enable creators to stay on their path, focusing on what they love while making a living doing it.”
The Creative Economy Starts Here
Imagine walking into your favorite cafe and seeing a local photographer's work on the screen. You scan a QR code, learn their story, and find more of their work — all before your coffee arrives.
That is the Local Artist Network. We believe every community has creative talent that goes unseen. LAN makes that creativity visible, discoverable, and economically sustainable.
We are not a gallery. We are not a social network. We are building local creative infrastructure where creators can be discovered, spaces can host better screens, sponsors can support culture, and communities can participate.
“for people who don't even know there's anything happening in their town to walk by and discover that their town is alive with creators.”
Boulder, Colorado
The talent is here. The connective tissue is not.
He sat in on a local arts focus group — an open conversation with ten artists from the community about what it is actually like to work here. His notes from that room are a large part of why LAN starts in Boulder rather than anywhere else.
“there was a lot of great talent, orgs and pockets of creative work being done but there was an overall lack of cohesion and larger community awareness as to what was happening.”
Support that stays verbal
Boulder talks about how important the arts are, but the room described it as a bit of lip service.
Treated as a side novelty
Art needs to be seen as an added value proposition that enriches the community, rather than a little side novelty.
A hard town to make it in
The consensus in the room was that Boulder is a particularly difficult art community to be successful in.
Nothing that pulls it together
Spaces are scattered across town with no focal points, and the cost of rent has kept galleries out of downtown and beyond.
The cost of staying
Cost of living and the lack of affordable housing and studio space came up as a major pain point.
Nobody hears about it
Lack of promotion to the community at large, with grants able to support little more than bare-minimum operations.
Boulder is not short of creators. It is short of a way for the town to see them, and a way for the people who make things here to be paid for it. That missing connective tissue is what LAN is being built to be.
Why a town, and not the internet
You cannot be found in an ocean of billions.
“Local Artist Network is a genius idea because of the fact that you can't survive as a creator, in a global in the global, you know, ocean of billions of people, and anyone who breaks that down and tries to figure out that problem comes across the same answer, which is, oh, you gotta be hyper-local.”
“you're screaming at the top of your lungs with 5 billion other people. If you're doing that in your town, you're one of a few, especially in a particular, area of interest. You might be one of a hundred... oil painters, you know, suddenly you've got a voice.”
That is the whole design argument. On a global platform a Boulder painter is one voice among billions. On a Boulder network they are one of a few — and the people who might buy the work already walk past the window.
What he wants Boulder to feel like
Walk past a window and find out your town is alive.
“by having a series of displays in the windows at different locations, you would really get a sense of continuity as you drove by them.”
The original picture was simple: digital art hung in several windows of a single space, in tall portrait shapes around the edges of a building, signalling that the place is culturally part of its town — mostly beautiful still images made by people who live here.
Then it repeats down the street, so a walk or a drive across town reads as one continuous exhibition rather than a set of unrelated screens.
And then it moves. He pictures a single night in Boulder where spaces stagger their events, every screen carries what is happening at the others, and people travel between them together — on foot, or on their bikes — instead of picking one room and staying in it all evening.
And if you are happy where you are, you stay. The show streams to the space you are already sitting in, or to your living room at home. As he puts it: people in their hometown can watch a local event in their homes, or they can go out and enjoy it.
Money
Everyone gets paid.
“Everyone gets paid, for this to work in your town... everyone gets a salary, so they can actually Live off of this, so we're creating jobs everywhere we go, as well as connecting the hyper-local communities together.”
Not only the creators. He has been explicit that a creative economy is the whole stack or it is nothing: the people who run the spaces, the people who run the sound, the staff who make an evening happen — none of whom, as he puts it, really have a specific voice.
That is why the model runs backwards from the usual one. Spaces are not charged a subscription to take part. A space is paid when a sponsor pays for an impression on its screen, and creator participation is free.
“we can't all be millionaires, and we don't actually all need millions of dollars. We need to be above that poverty line, and in control of our future.”
Guardrails
What this will never become
The refusals are as defining as the ambitions. These limits were set before there was anything to limit.
Not the Las Vegas strip
A screen facing a street carries no flashing objects, no rapidly changing words and no obvious advertising. In his words, towns don't want their storefronts to turn into the Las Vegas strip, lots of blinking lights.
Not a pile of ads
A sponsor gets a credit in the bottom corner, kept as subtle and as tasteful as possible, and everyone gets a cut. "We don't want to turn the world into a pile of ads."
The work is never cropped
"Artists want to see their images without being cropped, so you have to find a way to display these with the cards all being the same height." The frame is fixed; the art inside it is not cut to fit.
The screens serve the town
Public alerts are reserved for genuine emergencies the whole public would want to hear about, rather than a feed of alarming news. He describes the reason as protecting the psyche of the population.
No cameras staring at people
Nobody wants cameras staring at them all the time, especially in a space they came to enjoy. Measuring an audience never becomes watching a room.
What We Believe
Six principles that guide everything we build.
Creators Should Not Pay to Be Seen
Creator participation is free. Artists should be able to build an audience, reach real spaces, and earn from their work without paying a gatekeeper for visibility.
Hyper-Local, Not Global
We are not trying to be everywhere. We are building deep in Boulder first — real relationships with real spaces and real creators. Quality over scale.
Sponsor-Funded, Not Ad-Supported
Sponsors invest in local culture, not interruptions. Their brand appears alongside art, never over it. Community goodwill, not banner ads.
Open Standards, Not Lock-In
Built on open protocols and federated identity (ActivityPub/PeerMesh). Your identity and your work belong to you. No walled gardens.
Community, Not Audience
Consumers are not passive viewers. They scan QR codes, visit creator profiles, attend events, and participate in the creative culture of their neighborhood.
Physical Spaces, Not Just Screens
Art belongs in the places where people gather — cafes, hotel lobbies, galleries, and public spaces. LAN bridges the digital and physical creative experience.
Boulder, CO
Launch City
Our first community — with more to come
Born in Boulder
Boulder has always been a creative city — home to artists, musicians, filmmakers, and makers of all kinds. LAN was born here because this community already has the creative talent, the space culture, and the community spirit to power a local creative economy.
Creators
Visual artists, musicians, filmmakers, poets, and creative coders calling Boulder home
Spaces
Cafes, galleries, hotels, bars, homes, and public places showing local art
Growing Community
Consumers, sponsors, and supporters building Boulder's creative economy together
“I've been thinking about, how do I distill this feeling I have? It's we, not I. ... And it's the royal we, the... the populace against the machine.”
Where you come in
This only works if the town shows up.
One account, and you activate whichever of these fits you. You can hold more than one.
Be a patron
Follow the creators whose work you like, tip them directly, and turn up to the things they are doing. The audience is the part of a local network that cannot be bought.
Create your accountBe a creator
Any kind of creator — painters, musicians, filmmakers, poets, thinkers, programmers, people making things nobody has a word for yet. Publish your work, reach the screens around town, and earn from it.
Join as a creatorOffer a space
A cafe, a gallery, a lobby, a workshop, a home, a field. If people gather there or walk past it, it can be part of the network — and it earns when a sponsor pays for an impression on its screen.
Activate space toolsSponsor the work
Fund the art on the screens instead of interrupting it. Your credit sits quietly beneath work your neighbors made, and the money reaches the people who made it.
Become a sponsorRelationship and governance
How LAN is operated
Local Artist Network (LAN) is a public-facing brand and service operated by Sumset Tech LLC using the peers.social platform. Distributed Creatives guides LAN's content standards and community stewardship as a mission-aligned nonprofit partner.
This affiliation does not change who handles ordinary commerce: purchases, tips, and other standard site transactions on LAN are commercial transactions handled by Sumset Tech LLC unless a flow is explicitly labeled as a separate nonprofit donation to Distributed Creatives.
Get in Touch
Whether you are a creator, a space owner, a potential sponsor, or just curious about the project, use the first-party signup flow to create one LAN account and activate the roles you need.
Local Artist Network · Boulder, CO · localartist.network