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 including the grief, the fear, and the exhaustion. 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. 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). We bring guest speakers who resist through creativity and build communities focused on art and joy.

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

• You want to meet, be inspired by and collaborate with cool people

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. You can participate in the creative prompt or show up and just hang out!

Meeting monthly in person in Washington DC, with online participation through this form.

February 2026: LIGHT

Creating light is a practice of hope when darkness feels overwhelming. Make something that plays with light and darkness. This prompt is intentionally open for interpretation. You could work with photography (long exposures, shadows, silhouettes). You could build something (lampshades, lanterns, light boxes, string lights, projection pieces). Collage using reflective materials. Small installations. Shadow puppets. Window decorations. Write a poem. Paint or draw something that considers illumination and obscurity as the subject. 

To sign up or submit a piece responding to this month’s prompt, fill out this form.

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

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