why the focus on creativity?
when there's SO much going on.
Creativity saved my life. It continues to save my life. This is why it’s a primary focus alongside community and wellness.
Attention and awareness at the intersection of creativity, community, and wellness, can save lives.
It’s only been THIS year that I’ve been able to fully absorb the impact of the above picture. For those who may not have seen it, it’s a real piece of an old Twitter campaign, a real picture taken by a real photographer of a real billboard with a real manifesto created by myself. I place an emphasis on the word real for many, many reasons, one being because sometimes it’s so big I have to remind myself. My creativity literally birthed a phrase and an image that hasn’t stopped going viral in the four years since it was created.
So why am I just now being able to fully process this moment? 2020 was a hard year for the entire world. For me, it was magnified by uncovering repressed trauma and stress while experiencing the last year of my Dad’s life on top of a devastating major world-shifting transformational disease known as COVID. This billboard hit at one of the darkest times of my life, so dark in fact, that I’m just now waking up from the haze of the past four years. When I look at this picture now though, I don’t think about going viral or the pain that I was personally experiencing while it was going viral, I think ‘damn those are MY words that I wrote, I typed, I created. nobody gave me those words, those are MINE.’ This billboard opened up a new realization about my own creativity, one that I hope encourages you: my creativity never leaves me, it’s always there for me to utilize for my own need.
On the days when I’m frustrated my creativity allows me to escape into a stress-free world of creating. When I’m overly anxious, it’s my creativity that gives me an opportunity to get out of my head. During moments of sadnes or grief, it’s creativity that gives me hope in the form of a poem, a song, art. When I don’t have the words to articulate something, it’s someone else’s creativity that allows me to find the right words or way of being or another perspective. Creativity does A LOT and I’m sure there are more things you can think about, even as you’re reading this.
So that is why #blkcreatives has such a strong focus on creating - because it is a lifesaver from a mental, emotional, spiritual, cultural, and economic standpoint. Yes there’s politics, climate change, to-do lists, overdue invoices, rent increase, doctor’s appointments, [insert major life obligation here] to pay attention to and I do not want to ignore the reality of life itself. Creativity can encompass all of those things plus what you’re called to do. It’s a solution, it’s a balm, it’s a safe space, it’s change, it’s so many different things.
I hope you get to tap into its gifts in the week ahead,
Melissa, founder of #blkcreatives
New Film: I Wish I Could See Heaven from Detroit Art House, misFitted
Coming from misFitted, LLC––a multimedia production company and creative art house rooted in Detroit––writer/director Zachary Cunningham along with cinematographer Charles Kennedy Jr. and an ensemble cast starring Don Snipes, create a world that takes viewers on a psychological trip where fate and redemption are brought into question. Read their interview on filmmaking, trust, and brotherhood in Detroit by writer LaToya Cross.
new sticker alert!
new month, new creations. get free shipping on our new stickers!
Links that heal: creativity, kindness, safety, integrity
This 15 minute grounding yoga practice is helpful when you’re on edge
use code blkcreatives when purchasing tickets to any of Lisa Beasley’s shows
Practical tips on building community because it’s a process in itself
How to think about rest as a form of resistance via All Things Considered
four things to help you start
Resources + Opportunities
Southern Cultures is an award-winning, peer-reviewed quarterly of the history, arts, and cultures of the US South, they’re currently accepting submissions
a list of literary journals opening in August
Artist Opportunities: August and September 2024 via Creative Capital
Something to consider aka a Journal Prompt
“What need to do I currently have that I’m not allowing myself to express?”
