The Joy & Creativity Collective: February Gathering

Everything feels heavy. The news is a lot. It's hard to permit ourselves to be joyous and even more difficult to motivate ourselves to be creative. But joy and art aren't frivolous when the world is breaking. They're how we survive it.

The Joy & Creativity Collective is a monthly gathering for anyone feeling the weight of the current political moment and who refuses to let despair win. We believe that making something beautiful, meaningful, or weird with our own hands is itself an act of resistance against forces that want us isolated, paralyzed, and hopeless. This is for the doodlers, DJs, poets, comedians, and makers. For people who used to create and miss it, who want to reconnect with the part of themselves that imagines and dreams and plays.

This Month's Theme: VOICE

This month we're sharing work inspired by our "Voice" prompt: Write a poem about something that matters to you right now and how you're processing the new year and everything going on in the world. Or, if you'd rather not write your own, pick a poem that speaks to you. Then illustrate it however you'd like: as a poster that could be wheatpasted on walls, a sticker, a journal entry, an audio recording. Use hand lettering, drawings, mixed media, digital collage, or whatever feels right.

Bring what you've made (or started, or are still thinking about) and we'll share our work together.

Featured Speaker: Samuel Miranda

We'll hear from Samuel Miranda on how poetry can be used to build community and personal resilience and resistance. Samuel (Sami) Miranda is a Puerto Rican poet, visual artist, and educator whose work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian and performed at The Kennedy Center. He manages programming at the American Poetry Museum, a Brookland-based institution founded in 2004 that celebrates poetry, promotes literacy, and fosters community dialogue through exhibitions, workshops, and readings.

Create Together

After the discussion, we'll have collage materials available to continue working on creative projects together, with snacks and drinks to fuel the making.

What to bring:

• Your creation inspired by the Voice prompt (in whatever state it's in)
• Materials for you to create/play and build on your project or start a new one! (scissors, glue, art supplies, collage materials...)
• Your curious, creative self
• Friends who want to join!

New to the group? You're welcome here. You don't need to have attended previous events or completed the prompt to join us. Come make something with us.

This is a Big Hope Project Learning Series. To learn more about The Big Hope Project, click here.

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