Fashioning a Web3 world: This creative leader is disrupting the art scene with virtual reality

• Greater Than Equal's Kamilah Sanders wants to unite the Nashville design community through the metaverse.

Kamilah Sanders is the founder and CEO of an organization for creative social impact called Greater Than Equal.

Its objective is to disrupt the fashion industry, and it is already working to achieve that goal.

Sanders, an event curator and speaker, has been involved with Nashville Design Week for three years, around the time Greater Than Equal was founded in 2019. This year's Nashville Design Week was held last week, but Sanders is also involved in the Nashville art community and wants to connect with people.

"I actually started focusing more on creatives and working with people in fashion and art, and really getting even more heavily involved in the Nashville community and seeing what's going on," said Sanders.

'Something bigger than ourselves':Nashville Design Week aims for collaboration

She received an art degree before working in fashion, sustainable tech and financial services. Now a multifaceted entrepreneur, she recently stepped away from the corporate setting into the social impact space, pursing consulting through Greater Than Equal.Nashville Design Week first launched during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, the premise for Sanders' organization was already established. She wanted to bring to the forefront what people don't normally highlight in the world of design and also spark thought-provoking conversations to help make an impact on the world.

"All the time, we hear so many of the same voices saying the same thing, and there's no change," Sanders said. "But there are so many people that have great ideals, and from a different perspective that we're not hearing from and so that's what I do."

During Nashville Design Week in 2020, Sanders produced a virtual event that revolved around sustainable fashion and equity. Attendees talked about how we can have equity, whether it's within sizing, ethnicities or pricing.

"They were looking to make sure that they had more diverse voices, and I always love working with organizations that are making sure that everybody's at the table, whether it's different types of mediums like fashion or architecture or different types of people," Sanders said.

The following year, Sanders hosted an event called the Into the Metaverse, an art reception with gallerist Clarence Edward of CE Gallery. The gallery included a showing of NFT art followed by a reception in the "metaverse" replicating a real-life gallery. A panel on non-fungible tokens sparking a lot of interest afterward.

For this year's Nashville Design Week, Sanders put together an event called Fashioning Our World Together to explore how business models are shifting to connect with audiences through NFTs and how augmented reality and virtual reality can be utilized to create experiences.

"It is like a beginner's bar or genius bar concept where people can go and open wallets or ask questions in a lounge or lobby area," Sanders said. "There are actually three different spaces in the place, so it is kind of like a tour. It's networking, having fun. There is a DJ and food and an NFT art installation by Keith Josiah."The event brought together in one video studio organizations, including NFT Nashville, that teach about creativity and Web3, a term referring to the prospect of a new stage of the internet driven by the cryptocurrency-related technology blockchain.

Another program called Gravity Sketch featured local designers who collaborated using virtual reality on a design, similar to a live-action viewing.

Because there was an NFT associated with the event, anyone who attended also has access to other events with the partnering organizations throughout the rest of this year and next year, too."I think it's about building connections and building communities, especially in this space, not thinking of people as competition, but asking how can we work together and build this together," Sanders said. "We're trying to move this forward. We're trying to make sure that we're building this together. We all have the same goal."Navigating Web3, a term for the prospect of a new stage of the internet driven by the cryptocurrency-related technology blockchain, can be difficult on one's own. Sanders wants to form a reliable source where anyone interested can seek valid information regarding how to apply it to their business as an artist or simply how to get into the metaverse.

"They need somewhere to go to connect the dots and to have a conversation with somebody that's going to give them that light bulb moment," she said.