The artisans who give your city its character are skilled at their craft and outgunned by chains, platforms, and algorithms. Open Guild hands them the skills, the custom tools, and the local network to build businesses that last. Sponsors fund it. The city opens the door. Participants pay nothing.
Are you an artisan? See if you qualify for a free cohort in your city.
Artisans built the first economy. Then scale priced them out for two hundred years.
More ↻Guilds trained artisans and looked after their own. Then the power loom did the work of twenty weavers, and running a business meant owning a factory or affording a back office most artisans could never reach.
Close ✕AI flips that. Tools that once needed a developer now just need a clear idea.
More ↻The custom tools that used to take engineers and a budget now take a clear idea of how your business runs. A florist can build the delivery tool she once would have hired someone for.
Close ✕The tech giants behind AI aren't innocent. Used well, their tools still hand power back.
More ↻Used deliberately, AI lets artisans build and own infrastructure that used to be too complex or too expensive. Open Guild teaches that use, and skips the generative gimmicks.
Close ✕Most artisans are expert craftspeople who were never taught the business skills to turn their craft into a lasting living. Start with the fundamentals: pricing, packaging, contracts, invoicing, distribution, building an audience, and the revenue already hiding in what you do.
Then build what you used to rent or go without:
If you understand your business, you can build the tools that run it. The curriculum is shaped and taught in part by local operators, so it fits your street, not a generic build-your-own-app class.
We skip the AI tools that manufacture creative work. We teach the ones that put infrastructure in your hands.
It was a network. That is the guild's other half, and the part software can't rebuild on its own.
Guilds lasted because members trained each other, vouched for each other, and spoke with one voice. Every cohort seeds that same network: other local artisans, the SBA loan officer, the city planner, a bank that actually opens accounts for small businesses. People to call when the problem hits twice.
That is the difference between a workshop that ends and capacity that stays. A city that funds Open Guild is paying for standing local infrastructure, a network its artisans keep using long after the cohort ends.
A business at the end. Not a notebook of aspirations.
Four programs run by the founding team. Each one fed directly into the Guild's curriculum and operating model.
In partnership with Prócora. 18 participants. All 18 completed the program. Each left with a developed business plan spanning industries from music to fashion to digital services.
Warner Bros. Discovery × Acme Innovation. 13 companies selected from hundreds of applicants for a startup accelerator on the WBD studio lot. Media platforms, software, digital marketplaces.
Students build arts-based products and services on the Raidar platform, from concept to deployed product, with real business models and real users. The academic foundation of the Guild's curriculum.
Sponsor-funded. We need a venue introduction and your community channels. Your city gets economic development, equity programming, and a standing network it can fund year over year.
Founding Sponsors co-design the inaugural program. Toolkit integration, co-branded content, panel presence, and documented outcomes built around your objectives.
Co-develop the local program, place students alongside working artisans, and give your institution a visible, documented role in the city's creative economy.