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.
Robbie Rosen
I was part of an inspiring documentary with a client’s mother who was battling a serious illness. We all wrote music to describe every step of her journey, which gave her an outlet to express her emotions and all she was going through. Read more>>
Won Jun Seok
I have a photography project that I named “Norigae (Day & Night),” that was a representation of my transforming identity as a Korean-American immigrant, caught in between a blend of two cultures. Upon moving to the United States when I was 10, I wanted to assimilate as fast as I possibly could so as to not stick out and “fit in.” However, as I’ve grown older I realized that my lack of speaking Korean, celebrating Korean holidays, and even listening to Korean music throughout my daily life made me lose such a large chunk of my heritage and personal roots. Read more>>
Allison Brost
Writing a book. In 2018 I unexpectedly lost my infant son and through the healing process, I found myself turning towards writing. Through the encouragement of family and friends I started a blog the following year and since then have shared daily encouragement online for those journeying in their faith at “This Side of Perfect.” It’s been a challenging but extremely rewarding journey to be able to write and share hope for others in their own dark times. Read more>>
Nnamdi Ngwe
I think the most meaningful project I have worked on so far is Tab Time. This is a children’s show lead by our Emmy Award winning host, Tabitha Brown.
I’ve been fortunate enough to work in comedy for years as a writer and performer, but writing on a kids show was not initially on my radar. When the possibility of working in the kids space came about, I realized that I could use my humor and lessons I’ve learned over the years to inspire and promote positive change, and that’s exactly what we’ve been doing. Read more>>
Adrien Myles
The most meaningful project I’ve ever worked on is my latest studio album, “DIE ALONE.” This album is especially meaningful because it’s the first time I’ve been truly honest in telling my story while also being extremely patient with the creative process. When I first started writing music, I was solely focused on making something catchy: something that would be acceptable and mainstream. And while I have written some incredible records with that approach, I wanted my next project to be something that was personal and timeless. I wanted to write songs that I can’t wait to listen to. When I put my headphones on and I’m deciding what it is that I want to hear, so many songs are relatable but it just stops there at relatable. Read more>>
Sarah Anyieth
One of the most meaningful projects for me has been facilitating a poetry workshop called “After the Storm.” On May 26, 2024, a devastating tornado hit Rogers, AR where I live. Fortunately, my family and my home were untouched, but many people in my community were not so lucky. I wanted to help my community, but I wasn’t sure how. A month later I could still see the devastating effects of the tornado. Before I was a full-time caregiver for my three-year-old daughter, I taught high school English and occasionally taught poetry classes in the community. I knew firsthand the healing power of writing as I had helped my students use writing to navigate trauma and to connect with others. I partnered with the local library and a local independent bookstore to provide poetry workshops called “After the Storm” where we read poems written about natural disasters. Read more>>
Christian Gonzales
Perhaps one of the most meaningful times for me were a combination of several projects and occasions during my senior year at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music from fall 2021 to spring 2022. I had several auditions for graduate school, competitions, and performances. All this work seriously helped me prepare for my studies at the Juilliard School the following fall. Read more>>
Kyle Credle
My Wxlf Pack musical short film was the most meaningful project that I’ve worked on as it’s a true testimony. Speaking on my pain and struggle of grieving a loss of my close friend. We created a new genre called ‘Inspirational Drill’ as we were first to have a gospel choir on drill instrumentation. Read more>>
Ruslan Millinhton
Hi, I wanna tell you about my big project on the whole back. In 2018, I started a large project—a full-back tattoo of a skull with a thorn branch above its head—for my dedicated client. This project took me 25 sessions, each lasting approximately 3 to 6 hours. Read more>>
Sofi Ronning
I would say the most meaningful project I’ve made to date was a custom heirloom denim jacket for my partner using his paternal Grandmother’s hand-stitched quilt patches. In 2023, we visited my partner’s grandparents in Southern California and I shared with his grandma some of the pieces I had started to make using people’s unfinished quilt projects and secondhand cutter quilts. His grandma is a lifelong quilter and after the conversation, she gifted me some of her unfinished work as well. As much as I appreciated her quilt patches, the pieces felt too special to sell through my business, so I set them aside for a special project. When my partner asked for a custom patchwork denim jacket using his grandmother’s patches for his birthday, it felt like the perfect project where my partner could appreciate his grandmother’s creative spirit for years to come. Read more>>
Steven Bennett
Some of the most meaningful projects I’ve ever worked on were the ones that were independent and unpaid. When I was a kid, I think the goal was always to get paid to perform and continue working on bigger and bigger projects. Of course, I still hold onto those dreams, but, in the past, those jobs have sometimes left me…unfulfilled — as grateful as I am for the experiences and opportunity. I’ve found that through the commercialization and corporatization of performance art, we can lose the reason we all got into this in the first place. Read more>>
Grace Anna Brahimy
My podcast, ArtMuse, is an extremely meaningful project to me. ArtMuse shares the the life-stories of the women pictured in famous works of art. Though we all know their faces, few of us know that many of these women were real women, with their own incredible life stories to share. I began the project in 2023 when I learned about a woman named Fillide Melandroni, who had modeled for several of Caravaggio’s paintings. Though I wrote my master’s thesis on Caravaggio, I had never before come across Fillide’s name, and had not considered that she was not only a real person, but lived a fascinating life. I then began to think of other famous paintings and researched who the model was. I found time and time again that these women not only had incredible life stories, but that their names and legacies have been wrongfully overlooked in our appreciation of these works. Read more>>
Diamantis and Socratis Zavitsanos
In 2022, we began producing our very first feature film, titled Sew Torn. Director and co-writer Freddy Macdonald, alongside his father Fred Macdonald, who served as co-writer and producer, presented us with one of the very first drafts of their screenplay. We befriended them at the Heartland International Film Festival in 2017, where both our films won awards. Read more>>
Vince Li
I am working on a story that emphasizes cultural empathy and racial justice. Read more>>
Cassian Bellino
I grew up in a Christian home and always wanted to meet my Creator feeling like I’d lived a meaningful life. But as the daughter of a businessman, I also felt this constant pressure to prioritize things like a stable income and a strong resume. For 27 years, I told myself I was doing well in my faith—meanwhile, I was pouring all my energy into building up myself, not Jesus. Then, in 2018, I found myself in a moment of desperation. I was asking God, “What is Your purpose for me?” That’s when He gave me an idea. And when I say “gave,” I mean it—it was too good to have come from my own confused, overthinking brain. But here’s the thing: I didn’t do anything with it. I sat on that idea for five years. Read more>>
Andrea Wittgens
I’m actually about to release a new full-length album called “Big Dreams Little Earthlings” in early spring of this year. I don’t know if it’s because these ten songs have been a culmination of abut 5 years of deep writing or simply because I’m working with an amazing production team, but it’s turned out to be the most meaningful project I’v ever done both musically and personally. It actually started during the pandemic lockdown when, like everyone else, I was stuck at home. I wasn’t playing out, going to collaborative songwriting festivals, or working with other musicians. While at first that was hard, I found myself falling down a beautiful rabbit hole of intensely personal solo writing. Read more>>
John Taylor
In the spring of 2015, I took to heart the words of Brazilian theatre artist Augusto Boal who said, “Education is transitive or it isn’t education” and I began looking for a play to direct for the fall semester. When I came across <i>Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays</i>, the Supreme Court was several months away from its ruling on marriage equality. I knew I wanted to produce it because it would make for a timely and relevant work of theatre. And it would also give my college students the chance to practice the art of theatre and social change. In doing so, it would bring to our small university in rural Colorado a very significant issue that would allow us to explore our campus commitment to diversity and inclusion. Depending on how the court ruled, our production would either be a “call to arms” for more activism or a celebration of justice and equality. With the Court’s historic decision, the purpose of our production became clear: we were celebrating! Read more>>
Laurie Maves Guglielmi
Creating art and writing in diaries have been constants throughout my life. Now at 53, they remain as integral as ever. Over nearly three decades of my professional career, I’ve maintained a regular rhythm of creative work: I make sketches which can evolve into drawings or paintings and then I write about them. At night, I dream, and upon waking (when I can remember them) I write about those dreams. Sometimes, those stories, ideas, or feelings transform into paintings. The combination of writing and painting feels as natural to me as breathing—they are innate parts of who I am. Read more>>
Jenna Reilly
In my short but lively time in filmmaking, I’ve luckily worked on many meaningful projects. But the one that I felt was most meaningful was the first short film I wrote and directed called “Nowhere To Turn.” The film is about a college student struggling with PTSD from her childhood sexual assault. I wanted to share a story that highlights something that so many people deal with every single day, yet is barely talked about. Mental health is a significant topic that has such a large stigma around it. Only within the past decade have societies decided to step up and take action. Yet it still may not be enough for those who feel alone in their struggle. I wanted the film to be a call to action for change in the American healthcare system to take mental health more seriously in their patients. Read more>>
Jenna Reilly
In my short but lively time in filmmaking, I’ve luckily worked on many meaningful projects. But the one that I felt was most meaningful was the first short film I wrote and directed called “Nowhere To Turn.” The film is about a college student struggling with PTSD from her childhood sexual assault. I wanted to share a story that highlights something that so many people deal with every single day, yet is barely talked about. Mental health is a significant topic that has such a large stigma around it. Only within the past decade have societies decided to step up and take action. Yet it still may not be enough for those who feel alone in their struggle. I wanted the film to be a call to action for change in the American healthcare system to take mental health more seriously in their patients. Read more>>
3CW PRODUCTIONS
Being our very first feature film as an independent production company, we consider our current project of “Johnnyboy and Zelda” to be the most meaningful to us. We’ve challenged ourselves in more ways than one, but most importantly, the story of orphan twins Johnnyboy and Zelda Cruz has reminded us of what it means to be family. The twins’ journey recounts real-life conflicts and human emotions that we have overcome ourselves throughout the years. Especially as immigrants and first generation Caribbean-Americans, the topic of family is close to our hearts – whether its the distance between estranged relatives, or people you see so often that one day they’re your cousin. Read more>>
Rachel Valencourt
Writing your first book is exhilarating, exhausting, and everything in between. For me, it took five years to bring <i>Every Night Has a Dawn</i> to life. Inspired by my grandmother’s resilience and the stories she shared from a bygone era, this book became my way to honor her legacy and share a piece of history. Read more>>
Nicole Brooke Schwartz
Ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to be sexy. Who could blame me? I grew up in Las Vegas where I saw countless half-naked women on billboards advertising for various strip clubs. One day, as I rode in the backseat of my grandma’s car with some relatives, I asked her, “What happens inside these places?” She responded naturally, “Well, women dance around, take off their clothes, and men give them money.” My soul stood up in glee and my eyes lit up. “Cool, that sounds like fun! I want to do that too!,” my 7-year-old-self cried out loud. The whole car was shocked with my response and immediately told me that stripping was not an appropriate career to pursue. Read more>>
Kristen Toedtman
I have been fortunate to work on a songwriting project with two colleague-friends and the Downtown Women’s Center in Los Angeles each fall for the past several years. When I was first approached about it by our parent organization, Street Symphony, I had a very clear “a-ha” moment of complete alignment. In the landscape of my creative endeavors, this hit a perfect alignment of my values. Creating music, collaborating with others and elevating voices of those whose voices often go unheard. For 10 weeks, we meet weekly at the Downtown Women’s Center in the heart of Skid Row and work together to write a song with whomever shows up. We sing, we improvise, we do writing exercises and eventually the song comes to form. Read more>>
Michael LeBlanc
I have so much love for the book I published last year, <i>DinQ: D&D in the Coffin Hold of the USS Enterprise</i>.
As the book is a memoir, it so happened I had started gathering experiences when I was six, though I would not truly appreciate the stories until much later (after both parents my had passed, my first marriage had failed, and the Navy was a distant memory). Read more>>
Caifeng Hong
One of the most meaningful projects I’ve worked on is “Mirror,” a group project created in 2020 during my third year at The Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. This project is significant to me because it was my first experience as a costume designer and a craft and makeup designer in a production. It definitely started my interest in film and theatre, setting the foundation for my career. Read more>>
Dinah Langsjoen
When it comes to the type of artistic projects I work on, I am grateful to say that almost every one of them has been meaningful to me in ways that make each very unique. That is a blessing, of course, however it sure makes the question of which has been the MOST meaningful difficult to select. Read more>>
Abby Kellems
The most meaningful project I’ve worked on is <i>Weathering Steel, </i>an album written and recorded by the Plein Air Sound Collective at the Tank Center for Sonic Arts. The Plein Air Sound Collective is a group of composer-performer-producers that focuses on creating site-specific pieces in which the physical performance space is also considered to be a collaborator. In May 2023 we had the opportunity to record our first album at the Tank, which is a seven-story steel water cistern-turned-recording space in western Colorado. Read more>>
Wendi Knox
As an award-winning Copywriter and Senior Vice-President/Creative Director at one of the largest advertising agencies in Los Angeles, I’ve written and supervised commercials that were shot by the Academy Award-winning Coen Brothers, featured William Wegman’s famous Weimaraner dogs and were profiled in the <i>New York Times</i>. Read more>>
Mary Elizabeth Anderson
The most meaningful project I’ve ever worked on has to be the series I created using glaze’s made from my deceased service dog’s ashes. I was devastated after her passing, and when we got her back from being cremated, I knew I wanted to find a way to make her into something beautiful I can look at and admire, rather than keeping her in the brown box she came home in. With the help of my college professor, I was able to come up with a glaze recipe using her ashes that was able to then be used and fired to make unique colors and effects depending on the color glazes you layer with it. Since then, I’ve used that same recipe to create more memorial pieces for family and friend’s deceased pets and it has been the most fulfilling work I’ve produced to date. Read more>>
Alondra Berrocales
I wanna say becoming a Missionary has been one of my most meaningful projects as I have to mentally and physically prepare myself to go out to travel the world to help and love others. As I got ready for my most recent Mission Trip To Africa I found myself getting pruned from my old selfish ways. My heart became softer and softer as I got educated on where and what we were expected to do once we arrived to Tanzania, Africa. During this time I had to work on my character, self-discipline, physical strength, mental health, photography skills, speaker skills, leadership skills and most importantly my knowledge behind the word of God. We got to serve over 200,000 thousand people in just a matter of 4 days during a healing festival. I got to work with children by reading to them, playing with them, handing out food and toys and so many other rewarding experiences. Read more>>
Sam Carson
The most meaningful project we’ve done so far is definitely the newest EP we put out “Harder, Faster, Louder”. It took only a couple of weekends to record everything, but having to wait for the records to be pressed till we can release things made it really difficult. Sometimes you work for so long on something and think that you may just give up on it, but it’s extremely rewarding to finally see it through and to have the final product in your hands Read more>>