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Executive Director/Founder | Manifesto Community Projects Partner | Co-creative Director | High Top Studios Toronto | Age: 26
Building brands may be Che Kothari’s job, but his passion is building communities. As partner and co-creative director of High Top studios, Kothari strives to develop relationships that benefit clients and empower their target demographic. “For me it’s obvious if you want to create a business that is sustainable you need to support the development of that city or community,” the 26-year-old says.
As a well-known photographer, the managing director of the urban music website Earwaks.com and a founding member of the Canadian Youth Arts Network, Kothari helps facilitate relationships between brands and the urban arts community that he is an active member of. It’s this connection to youth culture that informs the work High Top does. “We are the demo we represent,” Kothari says.
“We’re members of the community; we’re not outsiders.”
High Top specializes in photography and website design and has worked on projects for brands like Sony, BMG and TD.
The studio also designed the guidebook for Red Bull’s music academy and often collaborates with other agencies to provide photography services, as it did recently with The Jetstar Group for the electronics manufacturer Sennheiser’s campaign Hear.Iam.
However it is Kothari’s work outside of High Top that truly makes him one to watch. In 2007, he founded Manifesto Community Projects, a youth-led non-profit organization that aims to foster growth in Toronto’s arts community.
Kothari uses Manifesto to advocate for the use of art as force for social change. Last year he was invited to Harvard University to present his Manifesto work at the United Nations Safer Cities Forum.
A representative from the Organization of American States was so struck by Kothari’s ideas that he was invited to OAS headquarters in Washington to further discuss how arts and culture can positively transform struggling communities. Kothari ended up producing a seven-minute video that made the case to the General Assembly of the OAS. He continues to work with the OAS, creating a tool kit and a strategy to promote the video and a guerrilla marketing initiative slated for launch in 2010, and an eight-part TV series is in the works.
Though he’s dedicated to assisting youth struggling against violence, poverty and low levels of education, even his philanthropic work often blends with his job at High Top–Kothari also develops creative for Manifesto sponsors like Playstation.
In Kothari’s world, art and commerce work together, and everybody benefits. Once communities see that brands respect them, the relationship is built to last, he says. “The honest truth is relationship building in any partnership needs to be built on understanding and mutual respect.”
