Andy Stoll stands on top of a mountain of prayer flags at Yumbu Lhakang in the Yarlung Valley of Tibet. A University of Iowa graduate, Stoll embarked on a four-year journey around the world in August 2006. The social entrepreneur and media producer is now based in Cedar Rapids and has launched ICCReatives as a networking website for people engaged in creative endeavors in Eastern Iowa and beyond. (Andy Stoll photo)

By Diana Nollen/ SourceMedia Grpup

Everywhere he looks, Andy Stoll sees creativity at work in the Corridor.

So this social entrepreneur and media producer is putting his creativity to work to build a community of connections for artistic types in the Cedar Rapids-Iowa City area.

Inspired by www.creativeportland.me and http://desmob.com, Stoll, 31, of Cedar Rapids, teamed up with Cramer Dev in Iowa City to launch http://iccreatives.us/ in early February.

That’s ICCReatives, appropriately pronounced: “I see creatives.”

“Pun intended,” says Stoll, who lives a creative life. He spent four years traveling around the world; served as a producer for the film “16 to Life,” shot in Eastern Iowa; is shopping out a couple of TV shows; has worked with Bollywood films in India; and moonlights as a photographer, chef and cooking-class instructor.

He’s also lectured at colleges in Iowa, the University of West Kazakhstan and the U.S. Embassy in Yerevan, Armenia, and earned a master’s degree in media cultures, with highest distinction, from the City University of Hong Kong.

But the Omaha native who came to the University of Iowa in 1998 to study media production and business management has chosen Iowa for his base.

“I traveled, worked and lived in 40 countries in four years,” he says. “I came back and looked at places you think a creative might go — New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago — and realized that Iowa was the place I wanted to call home. There are things I could do in Iowa that I couldn’t do elsewhere, because of the quality of life and the low cost of living.

“Where you live matters less than it did before. Some really great things can be done in the area.”

Coming home, he’s been eager to find and tap into the creative community and help others do so, as well, through this new web venture.

“Our goal was to see if we could get 15 people in the first couple of weeks to sign up and see if it works for them,” he says. “Within the first 48 hours, 40 people signed up.”

That number has grown to 120, in 60 categories ranging from Activist to Yoga Instructor, with Event Producer, Industrial Designer and Thinker in between. Even Party Poopers are welcome to enlist, alongside such expected titles as Actor, Dancer, Poet and Musician.

Andy Stoll (right) is shown in Jodhpur, India, playing a 19th-century British soldier in the 2010 Bollywood film “Veer,” starring Salman Khan. Stoll describes the film on his blog, http://noboundaries.org, as “an epic, period film about the uprising of a band of rebels against the ruling maharaja who is aligned with the British crown (think ‘Braveheart,’ but with more song-and-dance numbers).” (Andy Stoll photo)

“We’re not in a position to say if you’re creative — people self-define themselves as creatives,” Stoll says. “The site’s open; you put it up and it’s posted.

“It’s not an organization and not a company. It’s nothing more than a place for people in the area to find like-minded people and for others to find creatives in the area,” Stoll says.

That area isn’t limited to Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. Plenty of Eastern Iowa towns are included in the signup options, along with “Elsewhere in Iowa” and “Iowa in Spirit” classifications.

Another positive aim is to dispel some negative myths.

“Part of the conversation that spawned the website is the belief that little creativity is going on the area because it’s Iowa,” Stoll says.

“I know from my experience that very interesting things are going on here,” he says. “Very interesting people are doing very interesting things. People don’t always know those things exist. Here they can expose their stories and find each other.

“It’s not a non-profit,” he stresses. “It’s a tool for the community to use however they decide they want to use it.”

It’s a no-frills venture on his part, just an outgrowth of a cocktail party conversation with Josh Cramer, founder of Cramer Development, a team of web designers and developers in Iowa City.

“We got together, made the site and turned it on. It’s not much more complicated than that,” Stoll says. “Other than the great work Cramer designed, very little went into it. We do no advertising and have no idea to turn it into something else.”

Stoll and the designers volunteered their time to launch the project.

“It was easy because I didn’t do anything,” says Stoll, who’s enjoying watching the site take on a life of its own.

Groups have already used it as a networking tool. Computer creatives used Twitter and Facebook to announce a meet-up last month at the new Hotel at Kirkwood Center, inviting anyone from ICCReatives to attend. Stoll didn’t go, but heard the event drew about 120 people.

“It was a cool thing — a really organic growth from the site,” he says. “I like the website because it’s a passive website. It doesn’t exert any control over anything. It’s just there, kind of like a piece of art, and people can respond to it however they respond to it.”

 ON THE NET

• ICCReatives: http://iccreatives.us
• Andy Stoll: www.andystoll.net
•  Cramer Dev: http://cramerdev.com