Thoughts & Resources

The days of corporate neutrality are over; you can stand for humanity or stand by as technology goes unchecked.  That is the world we live in as bots now can either decide or heavily influence law makers.  Let's stand with humanity, let's stand with Creatives!

Start here please.  

You have friends and you want to spend time with them.  You need to lead, period.  As an artist, you feel and see things they do not.  Get local, find healthy routines that you can invite your friends along to.  News flash, they are not all going to come along; in fact they are going to choose the easy comfortable thing that may be going against your values and ideals, like supporting humanity.  Here's the good news, you might start finding more diverse connection, ie your enemies.  That is okay, when you are local, don't fight them over geopolitical issues, or religious propaganda, or racially charged economic policies.   When you are local you can build with sanity.  

Find other creatives and support them for simply existing.  We don't have to back every issue, but when we are in relationship we get to hear each other.  It is a privilege to be heard and seen.  Give that gift to those creatives you find at coffee shops, local collectives, art meet ups & local art sales.  You speak a similar language with other creatives; so share.  

When you meet your enemies, think about them like all of the local creative people in your town are on a game show of Survivor with all the varied personalities that create drama and addicting television; but think about them like you are in it together for better or worse.   When we have already determined to accept people where they are at, then there is freedom.  Check in on what they are working on, don't shy away from differences, but ask about their families and let them know you want the best for them.   

Still, not every group is a great fit.  Choose groups that really are about the creativity, strong enough to survive the friction.  Stray away from the egocentric group and the comfy groups based on identity enforcement or virtue signaling.   So how can you tell the difference?  The right groups support their people.  

So be local, design and sketch in public to be known.   Identify five spots where you can work, people in town frequent and during a time you will be spotted.  Let the conversations come to you. 

Be intentional.  Now that you are regularly speaking with others take your creative community to the next level.  Find a local group to join/ support.  If you end up starting a group, even better.  Remember that you are not creating the group, you are creating a space for creatives to gather.  Besides the consistency of showing up to work and connect; you get some degree of accountability as you have invited others to glimpse your process who might ask you about your progress next time you meet.  We need to keep it fun.  The group will be what it will be, unless you are investing in the group and running it like a business, it will be what it will be; a collection of local creatives that you get to learn about.

 It's impossible to take a stand on sinking ground.  Social media, public space and local communities are not nuetral and it is not worth it to build somewhere that will demand you chose your livelyhood over your values.  We must create and stand in spaces that allow freedom of expression, debates of issues and a search for truth.  If you are in a space that has lot the plot on humanity then why would you want to make a life around them.  Convienece is no longer convient. 

If the closest group is too far away, create a chapter of that group near you.  Reach out to see if anyone from that group would join you.  There is probably 2 or 3 people in your circumstance near you.  Start there and make it.   Build based on one simple project, show, class to give a purpose and finishline. 

When you have a group growing together you find your are developing relationships that know you and are connected. 

Your routines help to establish a rythm that often creates micro communities and opportunities, before you know it you're in a community that formed around you.

Don't run from the differences.  Embrace them, be thankful for them.  Thannkful that they aren't being hunted down, thankful they can speak up.  Life is hard work; fill your community with life by the way you extend yourself and build for the communal good.   Recognize that some will focus on member empowerment or visibility, others will focus on events and community bonding and others will focus on education and growth; know that all these areas are good and can birth their own off shoots in time.   Don't devide over these differences, plan their growth.  Support each other to grow in these areas and encourage eachother to lead in those specific interest.   

The key to unity is growing where you are closest and strongest.  We must prune all the dead weight that our culture and communities tell us are required reason to hate each other.  The hope for a tree cut down is not in its differences but in the comonality.  We are human, a family who needs each other.  Can we value each others lives for existing?   Creatives share a language more than they understand.  In each of the creative communities we were a part of, people traveled over 30 miles to attend, be it sporatically, they continued on.   We need each other, to gather and build.