The Joy & Creativity Collective

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. It is how we survive it.

This group is for anyone feeling the weight of the current political moment—the grief, the fear, the exhaustion. For those who refuse 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—especially now when finding joy can feel impossible or can even make us feel guilty. But joy isn't the absence of grief. Joy is what we practice alongside grief to stay human, to stay connected, to keep going.

Join us monthly to make art, find humor in darkness, and remember that creativity is resistance. Each month you'll create something with your hands—creative projects you work on at home and bring to share. We'll explore different creative mediums (poetry, painting, music, games, cooking, comedy) and read books that inspire joyful resistance. Some months we'll read novels that find humor in darkness. Other months we'll study how festivals, music, or play build community power and how oppressed communities have always used creativity to survive.

Forget "good art." Forget experience. This is a monthly gathering to reclaim creativity as a lifeline. We make things with our hands to remember our power. We laugh together to remember we're not alone. Creating, imagining, and making art together builds the connections that sustain us through hard times.

This is for you if:

• You used to create and miss it

• You feel paralyzed and need a spark

• You believe that creating is a radical act of hope

How It Works:

• Each month, we gather (online & in-person) around a new, playful creative ‘brief.’ We provide inspiration and the community; you bring your curious self. All you have to do is show up.

Meeting monthly online and in person.

To be notified of upcoming online & in-person events and to participate in the monthly creative prompts, sign up here. To register for the first in-person event in DC, see our eventbrite page.

This is a Big Hope Project Learning Series. To Learn more about the Big Hope Project, click here.