Our StoryRiver Quartz Collective is an interdisciplinary creative and cultural strategy practice founded by Erica Quinn, working with a flexible team of facilitators, artists, and collaborators.
We work with communities and organizations to activate place-based assets, support cultural ecosystems, and build the conditions for meaningful collective life. At its core, the work sits between creative practice, facilitation, and community building.
Erica Quinn
Founder & Principal
Erica Quinn (she/her) is a cultural strategist, facilitator, educator, and community builder based in Pennsylvania. With 15+ years of experience across arts, nonprofit leadership, economic development, and creative placemaking, she helps organizations and communities navigate change, build partnerships, and bring ideas into action.
Her work centers on the connections between culture, entrepreneurship, public space, and place. Erica has led initiatives in downtown revitalization, tourism, workforce development, nonprofit growth, and community engagement, bringing diverse partners together to imagine what’s possible and create the structures to make it happen.
Our Collective
Jane Hargrave
Jane Hargrave (she/her) is a systems-oriented designer, artist, facilitator, and writer based in Central Pennsylvania. Drawing on experience spanning regenerative agriculture, instructional design, customer and user experience, product development, and small-scale manufacturing, she helps organizations build ways of working that strengthen collaboration and learning.
Jane’s creative practice focuses on craft and ecology, with a special interest in woven textiles. She believes in the power of hand-making to illuminate complex systems and deepen analytical skills and social understanding.
Jeff Carpineta
Jeff Carpineta (he/him) is a facilitator, real estate broker, artist, and community builder based in Philadelphia. Drawing on two decades of experience in real estate, historic preservation, adaptive reuse, and community-centered design, he helps people and organizations explore how spaces can better support creativity and collective life.
Jeff is the founder and steward of The Perch and The Emerald Wildflower Garden in Philadelphia’s East Kensington neighborhood and is the founder of the East Kensington Neighbors Association. Through his work preserving and transforming urban spaces, Jeff sees the built environment as a foundation for community life.
Corey Elbin
Corey Elbin (he/him) is a creative producer and community builder who helps organizations and communities create transformative experiences through music, live performance, and gathering spaces. Based in Central Pennsylvania, he is the founder and director of Manny’s Live Performance Space, Rhoneymeade Fest, and Gorinto Productions, and curator of Secret Planet. His work brings together live production, cultural programming, and creative placemaking to transform ideas into shared experiences.
Corey helps organizations create experiences that connect people and place. Drawing on years of experience in live production and artist networks, he brings a deep understanding of how gatherings can transform spaces and create meaningful moments of connection.
The River in Question:
A note from Erica:
I grew up in White Haven, PA on the Lehigh River and my parents owned a brick and mortar outfitter on Main Street. Since then, I’ve lived abroad, in NYC, off-grid, in the PA backwoods, and currently split time between Lemont, PA and Philadelphia- but the river has remained a constant.
The RQC team thinks about the river poetically in terms of movement and connectivity, resourcing communities and creating space for life to flourish. The cycling of water and systems. If you stand up in swiftly-moving water- you’re in trouble. If you fight the current- this will have been in vain. But if you read the river, learn to work with the river’s current and dynamics, you can use your tools to move nimbly and with curiosity and joy through flatwater and gnarly rapids alike.
And- don’t forget to look down. There’s quartz in every room, every community, every vacant lot, every conversation.
