Think of a time that you didn’t feel welcome. As a woman who is the soon-to-be-wife of a woman who prefers buttons and a collar over scoop necks and pencil skirts, the inevitable wedding suit shopping experience loomed in my future. We went together. For moral support. We knew nothing about suits. A gorges? What’s that. No one dared approach us. They stared, wondering why we were in this foreign land. We asked a gentleman to help us find a grey suit. He asked us what size the gentleman for which we were shopping was. Upon learning the … [Read more...]
About Taylor Craig
Setting Intention
"One great lesson we learn when we mess up is how to set intention." In this Forbes article, Liz Ryan highlights this as one of the great take-a-ways from a big failure. Ryan notes that after making a mistake, creative leaders have the opportunity to set intention. I believe we have this opportunity as we venture into any task. Each morning during the Creative Community House, a cornerstone component to the Creative Community Fellows program, we begin the day by setting intention together. Each day has a theme, a theme that the day's content … [Read more...]
Leftovers? Again?
Last Thursday when I came home from work, followed by a two-mile run and high intensity circuit workout, I was not in the mood to make the chickpea turmeric soup I had planned to whip up for us to eat that night. It was the middle of the week. The dark, winter days were getting to me. I was not prepared to spend an hour of my evening in the kitchen when the couch and my book were looking at me, calling my name. To paint the picture more clearly, I ritually cook a meal from scratch every night of the week. I simmer sauces. I roast vegetables. … [Read more...]
The Earthquake is Coming. How Do We Withstand it?
Crisis is everywhere. We are surrounded by it. It’s in the news headlines, in the text we just got from a family member and even in the daily operations of our organizations. Crisis can be both internal and external, personal and public. Personally, it feels as if we are surrounded yet distant from this word and its meaning. When it is not taking place in our backyard, we often don’t think or feel the effects of a crisis so intensely. The ways in which we react to crisis situations are shaped by our identity. I believe organizations have … [Read more...]
What is Creative Placemaking?
This whole conversation began as a means to talk about creative placemaking. What is it? What is its role and why should we care? We’ve spent the last few weeks hearing from our Creative Community Fellows and you. Today we want to wrap up the discussion by tackling the biggest question: what is creative placemaking? Amanda Thompson notes that the term creative placemaking acts as an inclusive phrase for a range of arts and culture activities that benefit communities: “Creative placemaking is a nice catch-all phrase that allows artists, … [Read more...]
Defining Community
How do you define community? This is one of the questions that we asked our Creative Community Fellows, and you, to answer and discuss over this week. For many, the definition included something shared, whatever that may be: a hometown, working in a certain art form or even a fleeting moment of standing at the same intersection together. Laurelin Kruse and Rachel Reynolds Luster certainly see community this way: "RACHEL: I tend to always return to Wendell Berry's definition of community, 'a people and their place.' I feel that the two are … [Read more...]