Grief often marks the very beginning of visionary work.

It can show up as an unmet need, a rupture, or a loss of someone, something, or some part of ourselves.

Grief opens a space in us that can often fill with longing, creative impulse, and with a quiet desire to build, say, or tend to something that hasn't been tended or created yet.

Note → This isn’t always the case. Not all grief is stirring. Not all grief leads us to desires. Sometimes grief teaches us how to do nothing, how to pause, and how to melt into the Earth.

And, yet, sometimes grief also teaches us how to craft, how to be audacious, and how to boldly pursue what wants to be created.

Sometimes, what we call vision is simply the creative answer to a question our grief is asking.

A response to a prayer we didn’t know we (or others) were praying.

In this season of Creative Devotion, we’ll explore how grief and vision are intertwined. How the work of making culture, crafting living stories, and generating tangible possibilities can come directly from our aches and losses.

Creative Devotion is a space for honest conversation, creative reflection, and shared presence. You don’t need to come with answers. Just your lived experience, your curiosities, and your care.

HERE YOU ARE, IN THE CYCLE BETWEEN THE PAST AND THE FUTURE, CHOOSING TO SPEND YOUR MIRACULOUS TIME IN THE EXPLORATION OF HOW HUMANS, ESPECIALLY THOSE SEEKING TO GROW LIBERATION AND JUSTICE, CAN LEARN FROM THE WORLD AROUND US HOW TO BEST COLLABORATE, HOW TO SHAPE CHANGE.

Adrienne Maree Brown

We’ll be gathering at Deep Waters

FROM 6:00 P.M. - 9:00 P.M.

2710 N INTERSTATE AVE
PORTLAND, OR 97227

Click Here to Register

Winter Contributors

Our Principles

NON-PRETENTIOUS / GROUNDED SPIRITUALITY / CURIOSITY-DRIVEN / NON-DOGMATIC / MYTH AS MEDICINE / CHANGE AS GODDESS / RE-INDIGENIZATION / CONVERSATIONS ABOUT THE FUTURE THAT ARE GROUNDED IN THE PRESENT / MANIFESTATION IS THE PEOPLE’S MAGIC / ETHERICALLY PROTECTED SPACE / HETERARCHY / ASCENSION REQUIRES DESCENSION / SELF-REPARENTING = SI / BRAVE AND REFLECTIVE REGENERATIVE RELATING / IT’S OKAY TO MAKE THINGS CUTE / COMMUNAL RITES OF PASSAGE / GRIEF IS SACRED / DEATH → LIFE → DEATH / THE BODY IS A HOLY VESSEL / MISTAKES ARE A BLESSING / PEOPLE ARE HUMAN / POLITICS ARE NUANCED / IT’S OKAY TO LAUGH AND PLAY / COMMUNITY IS A PROCESS / WE ARE NOT POLICE / ONENESS WITHOUT UNIFORMITY / CAPACITY FOR COMPLEXITY / PARADOX IS QUEEN

WHAT IS CREATIVE DEVOTION?

Not a podcast. Not another stuffy art talk. Not a lecture. Not a zoom call. Not another livestream or a recorded event.

This is a living, breathing, multi-modal conversation. You have to be there in-person. Flesh and bone. Shoes off. Buttcheeks on the floor. Heart open and present.

Creative Devotion is a modern council for nurturing a vision of soft, earthen futures.

It’s not a typical panel discussion where the audience passively receives top-down, lecture-style wisdom from artists or founders. Instead, it’s an invitation into a multi-perspective space where we gather to share experiences, ask questions, dissolve the boundaries between “speaker” and “audience”, and listen across difference.

Each gathering centers a guiding question pulled from something alive in the culture and in us. We’re not asking for finished, polished answers. We’re asking for presence, curiosity, and the willingness to be in shared inquiry about how we live, how we grieve, how we repair, and how we cultivate the futures we long to inhabit together.

We’re calling in creators, culturemakers, and keepers of innate wisdom who have used their creativity and devotion as a way to meet challenge, cultivate new possibilities, and nurture a sense of belonging within their community.

If that’s you, welcome home. Join us.

Past Sessions

Nico Goldenwolf, Ray, Sachprakash
Creative work is creative risk. We risk being seen. We risk being known. We risk sunken costs. We risk our hearts, and failure, and longing, and love.
Each and everytime we extend ourselves into the creative unknown, we must ask, “Is it worth it? Is it worth it? Is it worth it?”

And perhaps for the sake of our future cultures, it might be.
Kristin Anchors, Todd Joseph, Alison Dale
To take even one step toward bringing a vision to life can require a great deal of vulnerability. Because what if all fails? Or falls flat? Or doesn’t take? What if everyone leaves? Or hates it? Or hates me? We all ask some version of these very same questions. Some people say that all you need to pursue a vision is a plan. But, deep down, we all know that the creative process calls for so much more than that. There is so much risk tied up in trying to bring a vision to life. In this session of our series, we’ll explore how we negotiate Risk and Belonging in the creative process.