Black creatives in South Jersey are striving despite COVID-19 hurdles

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the loss of approximately 2.7 million jobs and more than $150 billion in sales nationwide in 2020, according to the Brookings Institution.

- Ahnyah Pinckney

That’s roughly one-third of jobs and nine percent of annual sales across the creative economy, which includes: fashion, film, art, music, and advertising industries.

New Jersey is home to 19,000 arts-related businesses, which employ some 80,233 people statewide, according to the advocacy group Americans for the Arts. Here in South Jersey, creatives are coping with the impacts of COVID and systemic inequality yet thriving despite limited resources.

We spent time with three of them. Fashion line and coworking space inspire creation of Black country club.’ “You have to go through adversity to figure out if this is what you want to do and to get to the next level of what you’re trying to do,” said Charles Jay, a native of Sicklerville and full-time entrepreneur since 2020. He shared that one particular struggle, his cancer survival story, is the inspiration for his fashion brand URBANE.

Jay launched the athletic luxury clothing line in 2015 after graduating from Rutgers with a bachelor's degree in Marketing. URBANE designs often feature the number 93, which is significant because Jay was diagnosed with cancer in 1993 at the age of two and had to have his right kidney removed.