The Culturettes

THE CULTURETTE MISSION STATEMENT

Our goal is to indulge in love for the arts and for culture in the companionship of women who share our joy, curiosity, and excitement.

REQUIREMENTS TO JOIN:

1. Have a profile photo that clearly shows your face. This helps us find you at events. It also helps our female membership feel safe in knowing who they’re supposed to be meeting.
2. Answer membership application questions. Please do this as best and as thoughtfully as you can. We use these answers to get to know new members before their first event.
3. Identify as a woman. While we are an LGBTQ+ friendly group, our membership is not open to men or those who identify as men. If you're on the spectrum, let's chat!
4. Be 21 or older. Children are not welcome at our events unless specifically stated otherwise (very rare). Our members are women of all sorts - childless ladies, moms and grandmothers are all represented in our group!

THE CULTURE OF THE CULTURETTES

I (Adriane) have always maintained we aren’t strictly speaking a social club and we are not a dinner club. Though we often socialize, and we often eat together. The main point whenever we get together is the cultural event. So, we start with the “cultural” event and then build the social opportunity around it. That often means we meet for a meal together either before or after the cultural portion of the event. Ie… dinner and movie or drinks and bowling or a picnic before Shakespeare in the Park.

We are diverse in variety of ways. We range in age from 21 to 65+. We include singles, divorcees, married women, widowers, etc. We are racially diverse. We have members with a variety of sexual orientations. We exhibit a variety of political views from left to right. We often attend events that support or celebrate racial diversity or queer culture (ex, documentaries, art exhibits, drag shows) and I also try to aim for us to be mindful about how we consume southern culture (plantation tours, civil rights documentaries, lectures, etc).

Historically, I have lead and organized most of the events. I scour the web, facebook, the newspaper, and get suggestions from our members. Veterans of the culturettes are welcome to post events and will do so, and hopefully increasingly will do so over the coming year. I ask that you come to a few events and get a feel for our group. We will welcome you. I ask our veterans to help bring you into the fold. We will share with you our in-jokes and you’ll hear our stories. We talk about the things we’ve done in the past, the things we want to repeat and the things we want to do in the future. And sometimes, our epic failures. Our veteran culturettes will happily regale you with the adventures we’ve had mostly to talk one of us into doing it again. And once you feel comfortable with us, you're welcome to ask for permission to organize events too!

At most events, you will find in attendance a few veterans and several newer people or even completely new people. We've been around since 2014 but new members float in and out fairly regularly. We have found that limiting events to 6 to 12 people keeps things more intimate and less intimidating. So you won’t find yourself in a sea of people and you’ll be able to get to know several people fairly well in your first outing. I’ve seen a lot of close friendship grow out of our events. It always makes me happy to see women connect and I hope you will find connection with us.