Working on something meaningful is a common desire – but how? We started asking folks to share the story of how they ended up working on a project they felt was meaningful because we wanted inspiration but also because we wondered if hearing from people from across a range of industries would help us identify patterns making it more likely for anyone to be able to find and work on projects that they would find meaningful.

Carter Fox

Working on Freddie Jackson’s album My First Love has been, without a doubt, the most meaningful project of my career. You always hear about “the moment” when someone picks you up and takes you on your first big tour, and back in 2015, when we started performing with Freddie, that was a HUGE moment for me as a 25-year-old bassist looking to make an impact. Up until that point, I had spent my career playing in all sorts of bands regionally, working with big artists on charting releases, with some really exciting moments in LA and New York. I even founded small labels and management agencies whose artists went on to sign with major labels and agencies—all of it building up to the big moment. And when I joined back up with my friends in JUTAUN in 2013, we were playing all over the country for a few years, releasing great music of our own. Then our manager (who also started managing Mr. Jackson) gave us the opportunity to work with him. Together, we’ve grown so much as a band, and this project really pushed us to new heights. Touring the world as Freddie’s band and writing and recording with him was incredible, and it solidified a bond that I’ll carry forever. And shoutout to JUTAUN’s bandleader, Jamie Evans, for producing that project too! Read more>>

Jenny K. Hager

As a sculptor/artist/collaborator, I’ve been really lucky to work on a variety of meaningful projects. One that stands out and also one that I am currently revisiting is called “Flight: Rethreaded.” It was originally conceived/designed to bring awareness to the local organization “Rethreaded” and it was to be displayed at the UNF Lufrano Intercultural Gallery as a partnership with the organization. Rethreaded [https://rethreaded.com/about-us/] exists to restore choice, eliminate vulnerabilities to exploitation and break the cycle of generational trauma for survivors of human trafficking by providing employment, career development, and supportive services. Read more>>

Mimo The Musician

After a Decade in the Making, My Debut Album “Honey Brown Eyes” is Finally Here I’m excited to announce the release of my debut album, Honey Brown Eyes, a project that’s been ten years in the making. This album represents not just my music, but the journey that’s shaped me along the way. Balancing multiple jobs while chasing my dream of making music was a constant struggle, and for a long time, I couldn’t find the right harmony between my art and my livelihood. But after five years of trial and error, and one global pandemic later, Nashville gave me the clarity I needed. I spent years writing, refining, and finally selecting my best ten songs. That’s when I had the privilege of teaming up with Grammy-winning producer Dave Hagen, who brought this vision to life. Together, we created Honey Brown Eyes, a labor of love that captures my voice as a singer-songwriter. Read more>>

Yuki Shao

The most meaningful project I’ve worked on was my artwork for the “Echoes of Intersection” exhibition. This exhibition resonated deeply with me as an Asian American, as it explored themes of identity, belonging, and social justice. My artwork was inspired by my experience attending a play based on a real-life event in 1959 Montgomery, Alabama and my work was showcased in the Honors Art Exhibit at University of South Florida in April 2024. The play itself was a powerful and moving experience that stayed with me long after the curtain fell. It highlighted the struggles and triumphs of individuals who fought for civil rights during a time of great social upheaval. As an Asian American, I saw parallels between the historical injustices faced by the Black community and the ongoing struggles for equality and representation within my own community. Read more>>

Eliana Cordova

Definitely shooting my first short film: One Minute of Unconsciousness. It’s been the most ambitious project I’ve done until now, and it was the first time I directed, produced and wrote something that I knew I wanted to distribute worldwide. Long story short, I started this project in 2023. I wrote a script about two young adults who moved to LA, met, became best friends and shared their journey dealing with adversity, uncertainty and personal struggle while supporting each other. But I got scammed and I lost almost everything we shot. But that didn’t stop me, so months later, I realized that what I really wanted to talk about from the beginning was immigration and mental health. Read more>>

Xinyi Xan

Don’t Be Strangers began as a podcast with a simple goal: to share the stories of everyday people. It was an open platform where anyone could apply to have a genuine conversation, not just an interview. As I spoke to these incredible individuals, I couldn’t shake the feeling that listeners were missing out on the chance to truly connect with the guests beyond the podcast episodes. This frustration sparked the idea for a pen pals club—an opportunity for past guests to engage more deeply with the audience. Having grown up with pen pals myself, I loved the idea of fostering connections at a slower, more meaningful pace. It felt like the right next step in building a community that prioritized depth over immediacy. Read more>>

Cait Cro

My novels are definitely the most meaningful project I have worked on. I was an avid reader growing up, then as a teen I got into writing fanfiction and got a taste of that infections joy that comes when someone reads your work and likes it. I wanted to be a writer so bad, but had a bad habit of not being able to finish anything. I have dozens of books rattling around in my head, some which I have only written a few pages. Then, I randomly came across a few “spicy” books online that were very poorly written and had an “I could do better than that” realization. Read more>>

Doumafis Lafontant

I conceived Development+ Art, a local organization designed for local artists to showcase their Cultural, Creative, and Artistic talents. Since the year 2009, I have worked primarily with local artists who see themselves as a business, i.e., small- medium enterprise (SME). Toward this aim, I connect local artists to live/work space by placing them at the center of the neighborhood development goals. The lack of live/work space leads most artists to get work outside of their field of expertise, sphere of influence, and neighborhoods. This state of affair makes the pursuit of a career in the creative industry secondary. “The starving artist” is a well-known phenomenon within the fine arts community. As it is said, “There is no social problem without solution,” I match the local artists to business opportunities and resources toward increasing the incomes of local artists. Read more>>

Garrett Lewis

Chirpmail is an animated series I created where I animate birds set to real life voicemails. I find a lot of joy in this ‘creature-comforts’ style of animation and it’s been a lot of fun bringing other folks’ voicemails to life. I got started by animating silly voicemails from family members, but now I open up voicemail submissions from anyone. One of the reasons I find this series meaningful is I get a lot of creative fulfillment out of it. The animated birds are composited over live-action footage, so the series involves me wearing a lot of creative hats (filmmaking, compositing, rigging, animating, etc.). I also love seeing the reactions from people. Read more>>

David Bagels

One of my most meaningful projects I’ve ever worked on, hands down, is my ROBGORE album. It was released in early 2023, but it had been in the works, in some form or another, for decades. The majority of my musical life, I’ve been the guitarist, or the singer, or both, in various alternative rock bands throughout the 2000s. With that being said, not many people may know that my first love is Hip-Hop. Before all the bands I was a part of, I was writing, producing, and performing Hip-Hop since Jr High and then throughout High school. However, near the end of the millennium, I became disillusioned with the direction things were heading so I decided to chart a different course. But the fact I’d never finished and released a proper Hip-Hop album continued to eat away at me. Now fast forward to 2020 and we’re stuck in the middle of a world-wide pandemic. Everyone is quarantined but I knew there was a way to turn these covid lemons into liquid gold. Read more>>

Tyler J. Thompson

For me, the most meaningful project that I worked on was finally putting a collection of my poetry together and publishing my first book, Back to the Garden. I’d say this is the most meaningful because it’s also the most intimate and vulnerable. When I write scripts the stories always have crumbs of me sprinkled throughout in the form of other characters, but my book of poetry is a look directly into my mind and heart. I would vomit out these poems and musings over the past fifteen years right as they came to me, so the entire book is a compilation of my feelings and thoughts as raw and real as I could get them down onto a notebook or my phone notes. Read more>>

Abby Guillory

One of the most meaningful pieces I have done is the Traiteur print. In South Louisiana, what many of us call cajun country, many people used to have what we called a traiteur in the area. Traiteur means faith healer. Its someone who would have been called upon in a rural area with no doctors to help cure you of your ailment by using prayers in french, local healing plants, & a few religious items. It’s considered a dying art (if you will) in Louisiana but there are a few books slowly coming out about the topic so the interest is coming back. There are even a few people around who still treat. Read more>>

Linda Pearlman Karlsberg

I interact with lots of different subject matter through my artwork; I repeatedly engage with varied bodies of work that include portraits, landscapes, still lifes, skies, nude figure studies, dancers and a series devoted to women who speak truth to power. I find it rewarding and stimulating to rotate my attention among these thematic genres as a means to explore my experiences in and of the world. It has allowed me to express both personal and universal themes of love and loss, and the challenges of being a woman in our time. I have interrogated the unfairness of the world, the fragility of ecosystems and climate while also celebrating its stunning beauty. Light is always a catalyst for my artwork, and the conflicts of light and shadow and the emotional responses light provokes underpin all the work. Ultimately, my varied subjects provide arenas in which to give form to my experience of being alive at this time in this place and to pursue images that express the fullness of being human. Read more>>

Robin Damore

I recently had a portrait purchased by the Smithsonian for the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. – “Live Long and Prosper – Nichelle Nichols, Star Trek’s Lt Uhura at 84. Before I was a portrait painter, I was a photographer. I was hired to photograph a collection of subjects for a book. Nichelle Nichols, who played Lt Uhura on the original Star Trek, was one of the subjects. I knew of her but did not watch Star Trek so was not a fan. I flew to her home outside of Los Angeles and spent the afternoon with her, she was 72. For some reason she liked me, perhaps because I was just interested in her and didn’t really know about her celebrity. I liked one of the photos I took of her so much that I decided to paint it. I had been painting portraits for about 4 years at the time. I took the painting with me to several art shows and was surprised by how many people recognized her and how amazed they were that I had met her. Thousands of people recognized her – I had no idea she was so beloved.  Read more>>

Martin French

I had been thinking about the German play “Woyzeck” for several years. Written by Georg Buchner about a murder in the early to mid-19th century, it is one of the first real psychological studies om theatre, investigating one of the first murder cases where the insanity of the perpetrator was taken into account. The play was also the last work of Buchner, as he died before finishing it. It remains unfinished, and with a great deal of debate about the order of the scenes, with different translators, adaptors, and productions picking and choosing the scenes and the order. Read more>>

Griffen Jones

I would say the project that resonates the most with me , and that I would say I have the most attachment to is my EP kitty city. All of the songs were about actual things, people and experiences. It was probably the most thought out and most technical release I’ve put out yet. The songs had a little bit more going on and were a little bit more poppy. i got a little bit more personal on the songs and they were kinda an output for those feelings and emotions I was feeling at the time. Read more>>

Blu Jnx

The release of my first single “DSM” has to be the most meaningful thus far. “DSM” is a beautiful master piece that expresses struggles of depression, suicide, and perseverance. It came about during what has been the most challenging time in my life. I was homeless, Hopping from house to house. It felt like the world was beating me while I was already down. I couldn’t get a job, approved for a car or an apartment. I had $800 cash I had saved from gogo dancing, and a $242 pending check I was waiting to receive. After exhausting all my options on my own I realized I was going to have to suck up my pride and ask for help. The most important people in my life made it very clear they had my back and reassured me I was more than capable of getting through this hurdle. Read more>>

Tanae James

Throughout my career, I’ve worked on many projects that are dear to my heart, but I’m currently involved in one that may be the most meaningful yet. My goal has always been to promote inclusivity and create a safe space in the beauty industry for people of color. I am launching a blog called “The Beauty Breakthrough,” which will highlight the experiences of Black and POC women in beauty. In this space, I’ll delve into the complexities of building a brand while embracing individualism, overcoming imposter syndrome, and celebrating the multifaceted lives we lead. Through my journey, I’ll explore authentic friendships, relationships, and the importance of prioritizing health and wellness. My aim is to inspire readers to embrace their true selves and break free from societal norms. This project is meaningful to me because it combines my passion for beauty with my commitment to empowerment and representation. Read more>>

Dan Williams

I think every project I’ve done is meaningful, but this next project I am working on I think is the most meaningful in my life right now. It is my senior year of college, and I just take a step back and look at how hard I’ve worked up until now. And just how I have persisted throughout these four years that I’ve been here. I am beyond proud of myself and it’s the most surreal feeling. Producing this last runway show while I am in college is surreal. Looking back at where I started to now is just the craziest feeling. I originally wasn’t going to do another one after producing two in one school year, but a good friend of mine, named Dasya, emphasized that I needed to do this last one as a farewell to my college years and saying hello to what would be a new reality for me and my career once I graduate. So this next project means a lot to me and I am working hard to ensure that this is my best work to date. Read more>>

Saif Alsaegh

In one of my films Bitter with a Shy Taste of Sweetness (2019), I take an experimental approach to navigating the meaning of fate in Baghdad and the concept of survival in Southern California. The film looks critically at California’s intense quality of a seemingly utopian, happy, clean, and wealthy landscape and explores what it means to carry trauma and nostalgia in a world of pink dreams (an Arabic phrase with the same meaning as the phrase “pipe dreams”). Visually, I wanted to represent California’s landscape as foreign yet familiar, disrupted by my childhood memories. The camera tilts or spins, making the beautiful Southern California beaches and mountains jarring while the sound distorts the bright colors of the landscape. Through second-person writing and shrilling visuals, the film aims to make the viewer feel off-balance, disoriented, and estranged from the landscape and content, offering them the dislocating feeling of survival and immigration. My films lean towards the non- fiction, experimental and poetic form. Read more>>

Robyn Smith

The most meaningful piece I’ve made would have to be the coral-inspired vessel I entered into ArtPrize in 2023. When I started the piece, I knew it was going to be a medium-sized vase with flowing curves and a balance of positive and negative space that resembles the look of a coral reef. I then added minor sculptural elements to add interest. But the most meaningful part comes in the illustrations. During a particularly difficult time in my life when I felt like I had little control, my world was full of people who drained me, and the negative thoughts piled up, my therapist encouraged me to turn to nature to heal. She specifically asked me to focus on water, which can be insanely powerful like a waterfall, or soft and gentle, like a trickle. But each instance of it creates major change and can move mountains over time. With a newfound focus and inspiration, I grew and healed myself. The vase I created became a visual representation of water and its inhabitants, each symbolizing a trait I wished to possess in myself. For example, the creativity of an octopus, or the strength of a sea turtle. The vase also contains quotes from Margaret Atwood about the power of water and how we are one with it; and how when we recognize that power we can do great things. Read more>>

Sharon Kim

The most meaningful project I’ve worked on as an artist is one where I aimed to capture the unique qualities of children with disabilities, particularly those with mental challenges, and express that these traits are not shortcomings but rather beautiful differences. Through my art, I want to show that each child is valuable and worthy just as they are. This project is deeply personal to me because, as a mother of a child on the autism spectrum, I understand firsthand how lovable, adorable, and precious these children are. My goal is to help others see them through this same lens, to celebrate their uniqueness, and to foster a more inclusive perspective of beauty and worth. Read more>>

Kierstynn Lepper

One of the most meaningful projects I’ve created was an oil pastel portrait, in August 2024, the piece became a powerful personal expression of healing and renewal. At that time, I was going through a dark chapter in my life, having to make the painful choice to walk away from someone I loved deeply. While I cared for them so much, our relationship with each other wasnt healthy, days together felt like a battle for my mental well-being, my world felt drained of color, it was as though I was stuck in a grey haze. This artwork became a way of healing, morning the love I lost and the idea of what I wanted while reclaiming my joy and self-worth. The image symbolizes getting back my light and my color after losing so much of it prior. The flowers growing towards me in the piece represent the power I regained in shining so brightly, so confidently, that even nature responds to that energy. Read more>>

Janet Chloe

Reshaping the aesthetic of my art has been so near and dear to me. At the beginning of 2025, I exhibited a piece from a series of drawings that I created around the idea of seeing Africa through “rose-colored glasses”. My experience as a first-generation American has given me consistent access to the side of Africa that the world at large has begun to embrace through our music, fashion, and design. Growing up, it was embarrassing to be African because the narrative of our continent was told through the lens of colonization and capitalism. Commercials only showed this dying and impoverished place. Africans were portrayed as those who could not do for themselves, who needed to be saved, and who needed to be civilized. We did not meet the standard of Western beauty. But at home, our parents smiled as they reminisced on their childhood and the joys they experienced “back home”. Read more>>

Amari Hunter

The most meaningful project I’ve ever created is my upcoming 2025 album, PINK VERSACE FLAME CHILD. This album isn’t just a story—it’s a journey through different timelines and possibilities, tracing my own highs and lows, and the complex realities I’ve lived through. It reflects on pivotal moments, showing how life’s paths can twist and turn, ultimately leading us somewhere inevitable. It begins with my childhood, caught in the crossfire of violence—drive-bys, domestic abuse—and how those early experiences shaped who I am today. This part of the album sets the foundation, revealing how I was forced to grow up fast and deal with adult problems while still a kid. As I got older, I relied on coping mechanisms like drinking and isolating myself from loved ones, trying to figure out the root of my depression. But there’s no clear resolution, no simple answers. Read more>>