Instagram influencer Caroline Calloway revives US$165 creativity workshop – so what was it like?
Heavy criticism about her ‘scam’ tour led the American blogger who has 800,000 followers to cancel her plans, then revive them, writes Paige Leskin
While many of us were making New Year's resolutions, the Instagram influencer Caroline Calloway was paving the way for her redemption tour.
Calloway, 27, made headlines as stories about her US$165 “creativity workshop” gained traction in December. A viral Twitter thread accused Calloway of running a “scam”, and the Instagram star was forced to cancel her tour and refund tickets to attendees after receiving heavy criticism.
Details emerged that Calloway, who has more than 800,000 Instagram followers, was wholly unprepared for the tour and even considered asking attendees to bring their own food to events.
Her supporters have said she was simply “in over her head”, but that has not stopped her actions from drawing comparisons to the people behind the infamous Fyre Festival.
(The festival – a planned 2017 luxury music event over two weekends in the Bahamas, which had been promoted on Instagram by social media influencers, including models Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid – was postponed indefinitely, sparking a series of lawsuits, after it suffered a series of problems.)
However, earlier this month Calloway changed her mind: along with the rest of the world – or at least Calloway’s followers – I found out she had decided to uncancel her creativity tour.
The first rescheduled workshop was in New York on January 19 – three days after her announcement. So I went.
Calloway’s ‘personal brand’
Calloway is considered by many to be one of the first iterations of what we refer to as “influencers”, the people behind those established social media brands who are able to make ripples across the internet just by posting content for their thousands of devoted followers.