Arts & Letters Creative Co. Announces New 'Work Together, Anywhere' Model
Arts & Letters Creative Co. announced today that it is committed to a new operating model called 'Work Together, Anywhere' where the creative company will focus on creating a remote-first environment where teams can succeed and do their best work together regardless of location. In addition, Alex Brueggeman recently joined as director of community, where he is responsible for all community and DE&I efforts helping to ensure that the Arts & Letters community has inclusivity at its core regardless of where people are located.
Since 2020, the agency has doubled in size with 176 employees across 15 cities. With 75% employees based in Richmond, VA., Arts & Letters has built a creative campus with three physical office locations in Richmond. The newly opened 21,000 sq ft headquarters, located at 2700 E. Cary Street in downtown Richmond’s Shockoe Bottom, is a remote-first physical location optimised for participating on the screen whether that be with access to 'virtual' edit bays, remote production capabilities or technology enabled conference rooms.
Utilising the 'Work Together, Anywhere' model for clients as well, Arts & Letters will continue to lean into its open and empowered structure following an agile process of high-touch cycles of work. This process encourages more involvement for quicker creative decisions and the ability to get to the solution faster. By building bespoke teams, Arts & Letters is able to better serve as lead creative partner to address and support whatever a client needs.
“We’ve spent five years building a different kind of place, where talented people could come together and work alongside the world’s biggest dreamers. Our next five years and beyond, we remain dedicated to supporting those teams to work together from anywhere,” said Charles Hodges, founder and executive creative director of Arts & Letters. “It’s been our philosophy from the beginning, the idea that we could bring together some of the best minds regardless of where they are in the world. The pandemic tested, and then proved, our thesis. As we embrace the future of work, our belief in the power of teams remains unchanged. If we build strong teams to make things that solve big problems, we can also radically support them and help them thrive regardless of where they are located.”
To help carry out this new structure, Arts & Letters recently hired Alex as director of community. In this role, he will help answer the question “what does it feel like to work at Arts & Letters?” Alex was most recently associate director, global diversity, equity and inclusion at FCB and prior to that was DE&I Lead at 72andSunny. Alex will work closely with director of inclusion, Ralph Lee and community manager, Maya Shaw.
“I was immediately impressed with A&L’s deep commitment to its people, to centring humanity in everything they do,” said Alex. “During this intense period of social change and upheaval, A&Ls bias for ideating and dreaming are powerful tools for dismantling archaic ways of working and charting new, creative paths forward that reflect and cater to the diverse needs and experiences of Letterheads, wherever they may be. I’m so excited to join and be a part of this community and the team that’s “figuring this out.”
With this new operating model, Arts & Letters will provide tools and training to ensure coaches are equipped to lead a hybrid/remote team, provide growth and opportunities that aren’t limited by geographic location, commit to relentless innovation and experimentation to improve the experience of working together and offer community programming that promotes togetherness anywhere and opportunities for all to participate.
