Connecting to Your Community: Part Five

Previously in this series: Learn to Share: A Primer | Part One: Setting the Stage | Part Two: Identifying Your Motives | Part Three: Becoming a Catalyst | Part Four: Developing Synergy

Making A Difference

HYPOTHESIS The best way to balance our commodity-driven culture is to contribute to the community through the open exchange of knowledge, ideas and information.

Seeing the Forest for the Trees

It's been two full years since that first meeting of the minds—that planted seed that grew and blossomed into the I Heart Art: Portland program. After two full years of hosting accessible professional development workshops, convening community salon discussions, and devising unique speed-networking events that reach into Portland's vibrant community of makers, I look back and I smile to myself.

I get emails every now and then from people who have attended one or several of the events and programs that we put on, praising us for the amazing service that we bring to the community. They talk about finding the courage to take their creative business to the next level, finding a home for their creations to be sold and valued, and feeling like they're not alone in trying to succeed at doing what they love.

Many of them itch to pay it forward, knowing that what they've received is valuable not just to them but to so many others around them, wanting to give back by volunteering at an event, teaching a workshop, or contributing a blog article. Every time I get one of these emails a smile spreads across my face like a proud parent. This is what we set out to do. We are making a difference.

When you become a contributing member of a community, it's easy to get caught up in the logistics, the organization, or the stress that can build up around putting something like this out there into the world. The DIY culture unwittingly fosters a certain amount of martyrdom that can shroud your ability to see the forest for the trees.

But if you take the opportunity to step back and look outside, to pay attention to the people you are serving, you'll start to notice gratitude being channeled back at you. There is nothing quite like that feeling in the world—it feeds the soul.

Balancing the Burden of Commodity

Our society is founded upon the market, and has been for several thousand years. The marketplace has been so well-established in our everyday lives that there is no way that we can disassociate ourselves and return to the simple exchange of gifts that existed in more primitive civilizations. I also believe that our commodity-driven culture is something that's here to stay, as illustrated by the rising success of sites like Etsy who offer single business owners a chance to generate income doing what they love.

But the market is volatile, and the economic uncertainty of the last three years has driven that instability home to far too many people. If we have learned anything in this time, let it be two things: the importance of not becoming financially complacent and the value of having a strong sense of community. I firmly believe that sustained economic growth is unsustainable, and this recession is a turning point for us, allowing us to rethink the way that we live.

I also think that if we focus too heavily on satisfying the market and pumping our creative juices into production, we will become unbalanced. Our gifts need to be renewed on a regular basis, and money is not their lifeblood—the market exhausts and depletes creativity by constantly demanding more. Gift renewal is found in community, in the free exchange of knowledge, skill, information and social interaction. A gathering of like-minded creative people instills an energy into the individual that rejuvenates the mind and soul.

Staying on Track

In order to ensure that you do make a difference in the community you are serving, it's important to keep your goals and motives in check. Is what you set out to do still your main focus? Have your goals evolved based on the needs of the community? Remember that you're not just doing this for you. You're doing it for them. The benefits and rewards that come through faithful community service can be powerful, so long as your service is given with an eye single to the benefit of the community. These benefits may manifest themselves tangibly, but more often than not they are ethereal in nature (though no less potent for it). Keeping your motives on track will allow you to be the most effective instrument of change by honing your focus in on what matters most, not what you will get out of it in the end.

Take the opportunity every couple of months to look back at what you've done and check it against the motives you identified at the beginning and the mission that you set out to accomplish. Seek feedback from those you serve. Evaluate and reassess if needed. Community evolves, and your service should evolve with it.

As each individual event and each program year for I Heart Art: Portland has wrapped up, the leadership council spends time at our monthly meetings devoted to recapping the successes and lessons learned. Then, as we plan out the next events and programs we take those into consideration, while also looking back at what we set out to do from the beginning.

Have we effectively empowered Portland's vibrant community of makers to be successful at doing what they love? Are we successfully offering unique networking opportunities to our peers in order to help them build stronger business connections? Are we having fun while we do it? Evaluation is everything, and referring back to the goals set forth at the beginning (even though they may evolve) will help set everything in the proper perspective.

Reaping the Benefits

The benefits of meaningful community service and engagement go both ways. For the community, they are strengthened, edified, and uplifted. For the contributor, the reward goes far beyond the tangibles of name recognition, traffic to your own website, or applause when you enter the room. The greatest and more powerful reward is internal—emotional, intellectual, and psychological.

In building community, you build family. You connect with people on a deeper level than you might with a co-worker or a peer. When you truly make a difference, you build fraternity and equality. You also accomplish things you couldn't imagine doing on your own.

As I mentioned above, the emails and comments I receive on behalf of our program make me beam with joy. Knowing that our program is working is the biggest benefit to me. Other council members have commented that coming together as a team and executing a major event, while immediately exhausting, is exhilarating on the long term. Affirmation, validation, recognition, and gratitude go a long way to rejuvenate our gifts.

Bolstering Humanity

We are not factories. Production that caters to the market day in and day out is unsustainable to us makers. We are human beings that belong to the human community—humanity. Our soul must be nourished on a regular basis. We yearn for social interaction and a sustained sense of value in our community membership. Contributing to our individual communities, whatever they may be, contributes to the growth of humanity.

At the end of Lewis Hyde's The Gift, he turns to "a final story, of gifts and art," told by Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet. In the story, Neruda recalls growing up in an extremely remote Chilean mountain town with low literacy and a simple, practical and impermanent community that lived mostly in poverty.

I would paraphrase, but I would do the story injustice, and Hyde ties it together so eloquently (I do hope you don't think this will ruin the book for you):

Playing in the lot behind the house one day when he was still a little boy, Neruda discovered a hole in a fence board. "I looked through the hole and saw a landscape like that behind our house, uncared for, and wild. I moved back a few steps, because I sensed vaguely that something was about the happen. All of a sudden a hand appeared—a tiny hand of a boy about my own age. By the time I came close again, the hand was gone, and in its place there was a marvellous white toy sheep.

"The sheep's wool was faded. Its wheels had escaped. All of this only made it more authentic. I had never seen such a wonderful sheep. I looked back through the hole but the boy had disappeared. I went into the house and brought out a treasure of my own: a pine cone, opened, full of odor and resin, which I adored. I set it down in the same spot and went off with the sheep.

"I never saw either the hand or the boy again. And I have never seen a sheep like that either. The toy I lost finally in a fire. But even now… whenever I pass a toyshop, I look furtively into the window. It's no use. They don't make sheep like that any more."

Neruda has commented on this incident several times. "This exchange of gifts—mysterious—settled deep inside me like a sedimentary deposit," he once remarked in an interview. And he associates the exchange with his poetry. "I have been a lucky man. To feel the intimacy of brothers is a marvelous thing in life. To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life. But to feel the affection that comes from those whom we do not know, from those unknown to us, who are watching over our sleep and solitude, over our dangers and our weaknesses—that is something still greater and more beautiful because it widens out the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things.

"That exchange brought home to me for the first time a precious idea: that all humanity is somehow together… It won't surprise you then that I have attempted to give something resiny, earthlike, and fragrant in exchange for human brotherhood…

"This is the great lesson I learned in my childhood, in the backyard of a lonely house. Maybe it was nothing but a game two boys played who didn't know each other and wanted to pass to the other some good things of life. Yet maybe this small and mysterious exchange of gifts remained inside me also, deep and indestructible, giving my poetry light."

—The Gift, pp 367–368

Make A Difference

Remember that the circulation of gifts creates community. As we give of ourselves, the gifts of the community are strengthened and we ourselves are given back strength to rejuvenate our gifts and feed our soul. In an increasingly disconnected world plagued by economic uncertainty and riddled with corporate machinations, we must turn to our fellow beings and give to one another. We must connect as human beings to one another and give of our gifts as freely as we can to strengthen the many—and the one.

"All who have succeeded as artists are indebted to those who came before, [and sharing the gift] offers a concrete way for accomplished practitioners to give back to their communities, to assist others in attaining the success they themselves have achieved." —Lewis Hyde, The Gift (p. 384)

Go forth and give of your gifts. Connect to your community. Then tell me your story.

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Connecting to Your Community: Part Three

Previously in this series: Learn to Share: A Primer | Part One: Setting the Stage | Part Two: Identifying Your Motives

Becoming a Catalyst

HYPOTHESIS The best way to balance our commodity-driven culture is to contribute to the community through the open exchange of knowledge, ideas and information.

What is a catalyst?

In science, a catalyst is an agent that increases the rate of a reaction between two or more compounds. But what's interesting (and in my opinion, essential for this comparison) is that despite participating in the reaction, the catalyst is not consumed by the reaction itself, so the compounds in the chemical change aren't reacting with the catalyst, they're reacting because of its presence.

Agents for Change

When I was just out of high school, my good friend John served as an agent of change for those around him. After being diagnosed with bone cancer that had already spread through vital parts of his body, John spent several years fighting tooth and nail for his survival. After a leg amputation, numerous bouts of radiation and chemotherapy and rigorous physical therapy, he bounced back, conquering the cancer and entering into full remission.

But despite the ordeal, his eternally positive attitude and inspirational enthusiasm lent him to being a catalyst for those around him. No matter who he met or how long he got to know someone, from his doctors and nurses to his close family and even casual acquaintances, he initiated a change in them for the better. He had the uncanny ability to put a smile on the most pessimistic of faces and give hope to the hopeless. He was a catalyst.

Around this same time, John introduced me to another catalyst (the more catalysts you meet, the more you'll realize they tend to stay connected with one another). At the time, Kevin Carroll worked at Nike under the title of Katalyst (the K is for Kevin). Kevin's sole responsibility around the Nike world headquarters was to be an agent for creative change.

He initiated campus-wide guerrilla games of tag, held employee soccer tournaments, introduced leading athletes to students and children with terminal illnesses for inspiration, told his inspirational Red Rubber Ball story and much, much more. He had no shortage of wacky, zany, crazy ideas intended solely on inspiring creativity and provoking thought. He was a catalyst.

Passion, Enthusiasm and Strengths

I mentioned passion in the last article as a driving force for your motives, but you can also lean on your passions to guide you into becoming a catalyst. What strengths can you contribute to the community that you are joining or creating? Every community has needs and no one is expected to give 100% of themselves 100% of the time. So what can you give? Where do your talents lie and how can you apply them to this situation to become an agent for change? Is there a part of you that's currently unused?

Skills and talents aside, the biggest part of ourselves that we can use to develop a reaction in a community is our enthusiasm. If you have a passion for something and let that shine through in your words and actions, you will motivate, encourage and ignite action in the people you serve or with whom you work.

One thing that Kevin Carroll embodies as a "Katalyst" is enthusiasm. No matter what he did or what he talked about, he was genuinely excited. He couldn't wait to tell you a story or initiate a new project or show you a new perspective. That enthusiasm is what drove people to play along and join in the fun. And that enthusiasm is what makes him so successful in being an agent for change among his community.

What strengths do you have that you can offer up to your community? When you excel at something, there's a certain level of confidence and positive attitude that shines through while you're doing it. It could be writing, it could be web design. It could be meeting people and building relationships, or it could be planning events. When you believe in a cause and devote a portion of your positive side to it, you can initiate a positive reaction for change (and not be consumed in the process).

Collaboration: Be a Team Player

I have a confession to make—I'm a control freak. What's worse, I only realized and accepted this over the course of the last year. Thanks to a wonderfully patient leadership council, I've learned that I can't try to do everything all on my own. It's exhausting, for one thing, but it's also not fair to the other community members who are also putting time and effort into building something that we're passionate about. I was not being a very good team player, and no matter how much energy and enthusiasm I put into the program, it cheated my fellow teammates out of the full benefits of sharing the load and working together.

There are a lot of buzz words floating around these days when it comes to working with a community. Collaboration, cross-pollination, synergy, team-building, social practice, community engagement—I could go on. But while I'll dive into some of these more deeply with the next part of this series, Creating Synergy, I have to highlight the importance of working as a team.

Chemical reactions must involve at least two compounds, and with an agent for change, that makes three. There's no I in three. Truly effective teamwork prevents burnout (a phenomenon that's all too common these days), fuels the team's fire and enocourages growth and success. Shared responsibility results in shared goals and shared pride. A catalyst initiates and encourages action without taking charge and consuming everything.

When it comes to team work, and especially when a a project is just getting off the ground, flexibility to shape and modify things as the community responds is essential. We must be open to change and evolution—communities are living, breathing entities, and we must live and breathe with them.

Encourage and Facilitate a Culture of Proactivity

Stop letting things come to you—go out and find them. Our culture has encouraged us over the years to become more and more lazy. Our smartphones notify us when we have a new email. We shop online instead of going to brick and mortar establishments. We like being waited on.

But all too often we find ourselves sitting around and waiting for opportunities to come knocking. It's time to retake matters into our own hands. If you want to start something, then start it. If you want to meet someone, then call them up and meet them. Putting yourself out there shows initiative, demonstrates your desire to participate and puts you on the right path to becoming a catalyst. You become the driving force that allows others to join in and make change.

Taking the Plunge

Did you know that I'm an introvert? Anyone who's ever met me might laugh and try to call my bluff, but the honest truth is that I would usually prefer to sit at home or spend time with my close friends than go out to a networking event and introduce myself to strangers. It gives me goosebumps right now just thinking about it. But while I may have a hard time putting myself out there, I understand its importance and my passions and commitment to programs like I Heart Art: Portland are what drag me out.

Other introverts like me are saying, "I'm too shy to just jump in."

I bet that your closest friends would tell you otherwise. I bet that they see in you a fiery go-getter when your passion leads the way. The trick is channeling that passion into enthusiasm and forward momentum. Once you take those first steps, the rest is easy. For me, it was as simple as attending a meet-up in 2009. I met people that inspired me. I found a community that wanted me to succeed at making my art. That little kernel of excitement started it all.

Still others might wonder, "Why do I need to be a catalyst? Can't I just be one of the other compounds in your silly chemistry analogy?"

The quick answer is yes. You can be just a compound in the reaction equation. But let's examine the long answer and first think back to why we're here: to connect to our community. We're trying to balance our commodity-driven culture with meaningful peer engagement for mutual benefit. We've set the stage and identified our motives, committing already to doing something different than most.

Then, when you take a look around, you'll start to realize that the world needs more catalysts. Like I said before, we have turned into a lazy people, and it's time to turn that ship around. We need catalysts to make us think, help us make, ignite our creativity, pull us together, unite us in a cause, teach us how to play, inspire us to change, empower us to succeed, and much, much more. You can be a catalyst.

When you succeed, a new world will open up before your eyes. The result of the reaction that a catalyst creates is greater than the sum of its parts. You will be surrounded by collaborations, inspiration and unity. You'll be able to solve issues in a community, offer resources to those without and forge new relationships. The benefit is mutual.

Agent, Environment, Reaction

Use your passion as your engine, your enthusiasm as your fuel and your community to steer the vehicle. Just like John or Kevin or any number of successful community catalysts, you can be an agent for change. Once you do, the next step is a big one—Developing Synergy.

To be continued… Part Four: Developing Synergy

Reblogged from I Heart Art: Portland. Originally posted on August 4, 2011.

I want to give a special thank you to Diane Gilleland and Kim Werker for their incredible insight into this broad yet personal topic. I absolutely love collaborating with them on the series, and I couldn’t have assembled as coherent a presentation as I think this is without their help.

Connecting to Your Community: Part Two

Previously in this series: Learn to Share: A Primer | Part One: Setting the Stage.

Identifying Your Motives

HYPOTHESIS The best way to balance our commodity-driven culture is to contribute to the community through the open exchange of knowledge, ideas and information.

Know Yourself

Before jumping into a community blind and flailing around without drive or focus, it's important to take a step back and identify why you are doing this in the first place. And the key to doing that is knowing yourself.

This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. Farewell, my blessing season this in thee! —William Shakespeare, Hamlet 1:3

Reason

Why do you want to connect? Your reason shouldn't be because you feel obligated or because you think contributing to a community will generate sales for your business. There's little more annoying than a blatant self-promoter who doesn't understand where the line is drawn between self-interest and generosity. But perhaps you see a personal benefit in joining a community—this is not altogether bad.

Four years ago, my best friend told me about the volunteer work she had been doing at a local theater. Intrigued by the opportunity to see theater on a regular basis (and strictly limited to an art student budget), I joined the ranks of the volunteer ushers. During one performance of each play, we would take tickets, enforce the no photography rule and help patrons find their seats, and in return we got to see the play for free.

My initial interest in the volunteer program was selfish (I wanted to see more plays), but after four years of doing it, I've become more interested in contributing to the theater as a place of culture than in serving my own desire to experience it. Even if you are enticed by the perks that some service can offer, you will quickly appreciate the benefits your service gives to the community.

Belief

Where is your passion? What is the fuel that keeps the fire burning? Are you committed to the community you want to join? To dive into an existing community without belief in its tenets or without conviction behind your intentions sets you up for uncertainty and possibly rejection. Find your drive, what you really want to GIVE to people, and look for a community that shares that. If that drive doesn't exist, channel your ambition to help by creating a community. Remember, the circulation of gifts creates community. Start spreading gifts little by little, and see what kind of  community will grow out of it.

If, by chance, you find a community that you see is lacking something or that needs help, dive in and get to work. Just don't try and be a savior—it comes off as cocky and is usually rejected by the community. Remain true to yourself and let it work organically. You can follow that oft-referenced quote by Gandhi: "Be the change you want to see in the world."

Time

Do you have the time to spare to meaningfully participate in the community you would like to join? Our desire to contribute and belief in a cause can often drive us to bite off more than we can chew. The second our passion ignites, reason can easily fly out the window, and suddenly we find ourselves treading water in a sea of deadlines, exploding inboxes and burdensome meetings.

Survey your weekly and monthly commitments, and determine how much time you have to devote to a community before diving in. Do you have five hours per month? Ten hours per week? Whatever your actual level of commitment, it's valuable.

I have come to realize recently that I am a terrible estimator of time. For some reason, every to-do in my mind will take 30 minutes, but once I set to a task and dive into it, I look up at the clock and realize that two hours have passed!

Be realistic and learn to say "no".

When asked to do something, take a breath and ask yourself how soon it needs to be done. Take a mental tally of what's already on your plate (or consult your smartphone if you're like me and can't keep it all in your head) and then decide if it's something you can commit to. If you can, schedule the task into your calendar, and build a time buffer into it in case it takes longer than you think.

If you can't find a time to do it without leaving it until the last minute, say "No." Nothing will gain you more respect within a community than being able to accurately evaluate your workload and be honest about what you can or cannot do. If you'd still like to do it but only have a limited amount of time, ask for help. If you're working with someone on a project or a task, it's harder to procrastinate, especially if you agree to keep each other in check.

But if all else fails, maintain open lines of communication. Is a deadline looming that you realize you can't meet? Let someone know. Is there a meeting you know you can't make? Find out when you can meet with someone to get back up to speed.

If you keep the channels open and follow through with your commitments, you'll come out a winner and a champion. But the inverse is true as well. Falling through or flaking out could damage your reputation. You never know what doors might close to future opportunities if you let a community down. Manage your time well, say no or work with someone if you need to, and you'll maximize your effectiveness in the community you're reaching into.

I Don't Know

At this point, you've likely asked yourself some cold, hard questions. Why am I doing this? Do I believe in this? Do I have the time to commit to it? And any kind of self-evaluation, especially when it involves soul-searching and knowing yourself, can lead to inarticulate shrugging or throwing your arms up in the air. If this happens, the most important thing to remember is this:

"I don't know" is okay.

By searching within you and feeling around for your motives and intentions, you may realize that you can't answer some of these questions. That's no reason to stop. Saying "I don't know" to ourselves is an important component to self-discovery—by identifying a hole in our knowledge, we open our minds to thepossibilities and begin seeking answers. This is a process, so don't expect it to happen overnight. One of the participants at the salon discussion twisted JFK's famous quote into a relevant quip:

Ask not what your community can do for your art [or gift], but what your art can do for your community.

In August 2009, I attended a meet-up when a handful of people from Etsy visited Portland. This was the first time I had really heard about the Portland Etsy Team, and throughout the course of the evening, I met some of the most inspiring members of the team. After a lot of discussion and sparking some meaningful friendships, I was amazed at the support and encouragement available locally for people like me who were just starting out as small, creative business owners. I left that evening feeling better about the handmade community than I ever had, confident that there would be some way for me to get involved.

Two months later, I happened upon an open call for a meeting about a new partnership between Etsy and Pacific Northwest College of Art. I attended, anxious to see how I could contribute, and immediately latched onto the philosophy of advocacy and support for the creative community on a local scale. Over the next few months, I Heart Art: Portland was born, and I'm proud to be a part of it. The work I do for the program is the most rewarding, fulfilling and satisfying work I have ever done.

Do some soul-searching. And once you've established that your motives are pure, that your commitment is resolute, and that you have the time to spare, you can roll up your sleeves and move to the next step: Becoming a Catalyst.

To be continued... Part Three: Becoming A Catalyst

Reblogged from I Heart Art: Portland. Originally posted on June 22, 2011.

I want to give a special thank you to Diane Gilleland and Kim Werker for their incredible insight into this broad yet personal topic. I absolutely love collaborating with them on the series, and I couldn’t have assembled as coherent a presentation as I think this is without their help.

Connecting to Your Community: Part One

This series of articles addresses the topics discussed during a March 30 Salon Discussion I led titled "Connecting to Your Community." Some background information about the subject is available in a preliminary post, Learn to Share: A Primer.

Setting the Stage

HYPOTHESIS The best way to balance our commodity-driven culture is to contribute to the community through the open exchange of knowledge, ideas and information.

In the creative modern world, our gifts usually participate in the market. And while the market isn't intrinsically a bad thing, our guidance by it can sometimes overshadow the reason why we create in the first place—because our gifts compel us. As I examine this notion of balancing market-driven gifts and meaningful contribution to community, I break it down into five parts:

1. Setting the Stage
2. Identifying Your Motives
3. Becoming A Catalyst
4. Developing Synergy
5. Making A Difference

Gift vs. Market

Practices of many indigenous cultures and anecdotes found in fairy tales and mythology illustrate the idea of a gift economy—goods and services are delivered without an explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards—a culture without quid pro quo. The gifts are a form of reciprocal altruism intended to benefit the whole, not just the one. Everyone contributes in their own way, and everyone benefits.

Pardon my nerdiness, but any fan of Star Trek will nod in understanding of this concept. In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Spock sacrifices himself for the crew of the Enterprise. In his last breathing moments, he presses his irradiated body against the window and justifies his actions to a grieving [and overacting] Kirk:

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one. ... I have been, and always shall be, your friend.

The market (or sometimes barter) economy is one driven by products that hold intrinsic value. Money or other products are exchanged for an item based on its perceived or collectively established value.

Those of us who sell our artwork or handiwork are well aware of the importance of value when it comes to surviving in a market-driven world. Hello, capitalism. But while there's no escaping capitalism—barring some cataclysm that utterly destroys the market as we know it and forces us to return to our anthropological roots—if left unchecked, it can consume our life and eat at our soul. I don't mean to say that the market is bad in nature, but that imbalance can have negative consequences on our creativity.

Within the handmade market, though, we often find a barter economy. How many of you have scoped out a craft show in search of other vendors to trade product with? Bartering at this level, artist to artist, holds much more perceived value because we have a personal knowledge of how the object is made and are parting with something of equal value of our own making. There is much more emotion involved in act of the exchange than in parting with our money.

Money is typically disconnected from the labor that generates it by enough steps to dilute the emotional meaning. And in a market where mass-produced goods drive down the established value, the consumer gives more emotional weight to the amount of money they must part with than to the reasons why a handmade object is better than its mass-produced counterpart.

The maker, dealing with this dichotomy day in and day out, may feel burdened by the conundrum of making a livable wage while offering a marketable (read: inexpensive) product. This can eat away at the soul and lead a maker to severely undervalue their gift (which is another subject entirely).

The Strength of the Gift

So what is community? We all belong to a community of makers, and there are myriad sub-communities and super-communities that we can identify with.  Lewis Hyde, author of The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World, argues that the circulation of gifts creates community. So where there may not already be community, once a gift exchange is initiated, community is born.

We saw this happen first-hand with I Heart Art: Portland. By giving knowledge and providing opportunities for professional development, we planted a community seed that has since sprouted into a wonderful trove of talent, education and mutual support. Those who participate feel good about doing it, because they know they are benefiting others, just as they are benefiting themselves.

We nourish the spirit by disbursing our gifts, not by capitalizing upon them.  —Lewis Hyde

The spirit that Hyde speaks of here is the spirit of our own gifts—our own creativity, knowledge or talent. And by so nourishing our spirit, the community is nourished by the gifts themselves, the rewards of which are immeasurable.

Imbalance created by trusting too much of our own gifts or creativity with the market can then be re-centered by dedicating a portion of our talents to giving back to the community that nurtured our talent, nourishing our soul in the process and keeping our dependence upon the market in check.

Does this mean we should just grab a megaphone and a soapbox and stand up in the town square broadcasting creativity for everyone to hear? That just seems silly. By meaningfully identifying our motives, becoming a catalyst, developing synergy and making a difference, we can achieve a balance between the market-based world that we live in and the community that so openly embraces us.

To be continued... Part Two: Identifying Your Motives

Reblogged from I Heart Art: Portland. Originally posted on May 20, 2011.

I want to give a special thank you to Diane Gilleland and Kim Werker for their incredible insight into this broad yet personal topic. I absolutely love collaborating with them on the series, and I couldn't have assembled as coherent a presentation as I think this is without their help.