Helping people of color find their community in Central Texas.
By Sarah M. Vasquez
Living in Austin for 10 years, Lauren Burdett has heard that there aren’t many people of color in the city. With the high real estate prices continuing to contribute to the gentrification that has driven out longtime Black and Hispanic residents and dwindled affordable housing, the facts show that there has been a decline in these populations within the city limits. However, Burdett has managed to find people of color to hang out with as an educator and DJ. “I’ve spent a lot of time with different groups of people – we’re just not finding each other,” Burdett says.
So she asked herself, how can we fix this problem? That’s where Where Y’all At Though!? comes in.
Where Y’all At Though?! is a cultural tour guide that aims to connect the Black and Brown communities in Austin by uplifting and promoting local events and businesses that reflect and celebrate their identities. “Find your people” is their tagline, and they want to be that conduit to make it easier for these communities. The name is a nod to a typical message they’d text their friends while making plans.
Burdett pitched the idea to Erinn Knight and Brandon Boone, who have a creative marketing agency together called Build Your Own Dreams. Knight made the move to Austin in 2022 after traveling back and forth for business since 2017. To her, the city is so magical.
“I just love Austin,” Knight says. “There’s such a cool, laid back vibe to it, which is very similar to Atlanta, which is where I’m from. There’s just something special about this city that I adore.”
Knight says that whenever she and Boone would post video recaps of their events, some of the feedback would be that people didn’t know about them to attend. She realized if this is happening to them, it’s definitely happening to their friends as well.
“People don’t have a centralized place to come find what’s going on in our community. We may get snippets of things here, but we want a watering hole,” Knight says.
So the idea evolved into the creation of a social guide. The three gather events they find on social media or are sent to them through online submissions that are then shared on a Google Calendar. They have a mailing list of 7,000 subscribers and share their community calendar in weekly and daily blasts they call “assignments.” They also create business guides of places they recommend.
The system is pretty simple. Curators can submit their events through the online form on Where Y’all At Though!? website for free, unless it’s a corporate company. Knight says they’ve taken corporate sponsors in the past and have done a few paid collaborations, but they’re mostly focused on the local population.
“It’s a free submission if you are Black, Brown, Asian or ally,” Knight says. “You can still submit to our calendar if you’re not us. If you’re a safe place for us to be, we’re totally open to you being on the calendar, especially if you’re featuring DJs or vendors from our communities.”
The form asks for details of the event, such as time and place, and other focal points that let people know if it’s all ages, whether there’s a cover charge and other distinctions to determine the vibe of the night.
When the Instagram page first started, they intentionally didn’t want to attach their names to it. So, the posts were anonymous. This allowed the page to grow organically and for the creators to overhear genuine feedback about their work. Burdett says she would hear people suggesting the page to someone new in Austin and curators would say how helpful it was to post their stuff. People started to learn that she, Knight and Boone were behind the page when they started attending events that invited Where Y’all At Though!?. “It’s been a really good reception, because we all have really good reputations here in Austin,” Knight says.
This is no small feat considering they launched the page a year ago. They decided to debut during the 2023 AfroTech, a conference highlighting Black S.T.E.M professionals, innovators, entrepreneurs and visionaries. They provided recommendations of places to see and events to attend to those traveling to the city, from a local perspective. They first did a soft launch a week prior to promote Halloween events. The response was pretty swift.
People showed love within the first couple of days, and the page started to grow exponentially in the following months. However, it was during Black History Month that Where Y’all At Though!? saw a huge increase in followers, growing from 6,000 followers to 13,000 followers.
“I think people get it because it’s not about being exclusive,” Knight says. “Anybody can come to our events, but it’s about being able to gather and see yourself and be proud of what we’re building in this city.”
Each one of the founders plays a role with the guide. Boone does most of the curation for the calendar. “Shout out to Brandon, who is truly propelling the work forward in a really cool way,” Burdett says. Burdett helps behind the scenes with how the calendar works. Knight answers a lot of the emails. And, they continue to produce their own events.
“My personal goal, my chief desire in life, is to connect,” Knight says. “I’m always always looking for deeper connections with myself and with others.”
Knight was raised by a community that went beyond her nuclear family. Her parents came from large families, so she had a lot of cousins in addition to the non-related neighbors she referred to as aunties and uncles. Whenever her parents were unable to help, she’d call one of them. “People think that you have to be rich and wealthy to live a robust life, and I never made much money in my life, but I’ve lived way above my means because of my community,” Knight says.
That upbringing has fueled her purpose in being a connector and bridge builder. She always wants people to feel connected, loved and valued, a sentiment echoed by Burdett.
Growing up in El Paso, Burdett comes from a family that is about community and helping each other out. Her family used to collect gifts and toys to bring to the colonias on the other side of the border during Christmastime. Being an educator has also lent itself to her community building. She was a middle school teacher and an assistant principal at an elementary school before she started her DJ career. As most did during the first year of the pandemic, Burdett reassessed her life and wanted to get back into the music space. She took DJ classes and started meeting other curators, such as Knight and Boone, who were one of the first to book her.
A lot of Burdett’s work as a DJ has been around promoting women of color in this historically male predominant space. She is a mixed-raced Latina and wanted to create space for different types of people of color with Where Y’all At Though!? “It was very important to me for this to be for Black and Brown people, because there’s also some disjointedness between our communities,” Burdett says.
She says that everything Knight and Boone do is also centered around community. During their initial conversations, it came together naturally that they would be building community through this site – a responsibility the group doesn’t take lightly. “We have conversations about making sure that we’re doing it in a way that supports people who are doing really great things and are moving in a way that is in line with what we believe in,” Burdett says.
This year, they’re launching a subscription service in the form of a physical coupon book that will highlight 15 to 20 of their favorite businesses in Austin. The details are still being finalized, but Knight says that this will initially run from Black History Month in February until May 12 (512 as in the area code) to test the impact. The goal is to relaunch in June and produce a quarterly book as a way to boost the local economy.
The three entrepreneurs also want to explore more partnerships with larger brands to generate more income for their service. Knight shares that the little money that they’ve made has helped them break even with maintaining the website and throwing their own events. But the goal is to make some money to pay them and other team members, while keeping it as a free service to the community.
Overall, they look forward to making more of an impact on the City of Austin and being more dynamic with the way they display their culture and provide space for their communities.
“We’re seeing the real world effect ourselves and hearing from people,” Knight says. “We’re just grateful to be a part of the process of bringing more people together.”