We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Meagan Wright. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Meagan below.

Meagan, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

The most meaningful project that I have worked on is the non profit that I started, Gather People. I think sometimes we don’t set out to do something “meaningful”, I think often the seed that gets sown that produces those meaningful things comes from frustration and desperation to fix an injustice or problem. At the time that I never set out to start yet another non profit to engage artists, especially musicians with the questions of what it would look like to be healthy, emotionally and physically and then use our creative abilities to serve other artists and our communities. I was just frustrated and lonely in spite of being surrounded by people constantly. I had a desire to to become emotionally healthy, and create healthy relationships around me that didn’t always have to do with networking. I became exhausted by the fact that I was/or others working an angle for something. I became pretty jaded and slightly paranoid to say the least, lol.

Just like most things, at least for most of us impulsive musicians, I through spaghetti on the wall hoping it would stick and it did for a hot minute, but I didn’t realize how hard it was going to be to get musicians in a room together not for the purpose of creating bank rolling hit songs, but to offer what we had to health, friendship, and making the world a better place. I know some people gag at the idealism, but I thought it and tried it and it was HARD. So I ran. However, I have come to realize, you can only run so far, away from that thing that before you turn back around and try again and that is how Gather People was started, or restarted, haha.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

What do I want people to know about me? Everything and nothing. It’s the tension of my life! I’ve been writing and singing my entire life. I did realize there was more and that there was an art to it though when I moved to Nashville in my early twenties. It was definitely an accidental discovery though. I didn’t move there for the music, but was soon immersed into the good, the bad, and the ugly of being a pretty descent artist. I couldn’t hang emotionally though at that age and soon made my way back to the “Lone star” state to regroup and raise my family. Looking back, every set back was actually a building block to what I’m so passionate about now. Obviously, this isn’t for everyone, but for me, offering my craft to community over industry fits. Do I still record, yes. Not often though, and not because I don’t have material. I just love people, and family, and community, as hard and messy as it is sometimes. It’s easy to write and sing, it’s hard to be vulnerable and help others be the best versions of themselves sometimes, but I guess I’m a sucker for a challenge. I giggle a bit when people try to find my footprint on social media or other platforms, because we tend to be in the thick of things where its hard to exploit others journeys and hardships for our gain of followers, so we tend to have to invite people in instead of broadcast out. We are learning how to navigate this better though as the years go by. People come and go, that’s the nature of a gathering of artists. We often feel like feathers in the wind. We land for a season and then off we go in exploration of musings in which to create by. My expectation in all this is to create a space where the artist can come in from the hustle and peddling and know there is a place in each of us apart from our craft that is valuable and then invite them into a meaningful rhythm of life apart from the commodity of their art. One that serves the community around them, and lets everyone who gets the privilege of seeing, hearing, tasting, or smelling, their craft, that there is more to life then the business of it.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding thing for me as an artist is the ability to create something that hopefully lives on well after I’m gone. I know it sounds vain, but I still go to the pools of great musicians and writers and drink from their life expressed through their art. And knowing how short life is, its so empowering to know that there is a part of me that will do so also. My art is like another child, haha. I get the same prideful feeling when I finish a song or a project as I do when I look at my own children. Cheesy I know, but all of the artists can say amen!

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I love this question because I believe we are all creatives. We all create everyday, so please, if you don’t see yourself that way or feel left out, welcome home. We all create our lives, our spaces, our relationships, our bodies. You get the gist? However, there is a peculiar breed of creatives who HAVE to create to live and breathe or they will die. I know you know these people. Slightly off in a mysterious way that they feel no one understands and are ever searching for ways to manifest this beautiful tension wether through good food, tantalizing tunes, whimsical words, or colorful canvases. You know them or are one. We can’t help ourselves. Some people build the walls, others decorate them. These are the peculiar ones. I know I can’t put every creative in a box, because there would be no box to put them in, but it’s sometimes a scary thing to create something and then put it out there and say, “hey everyone! I just made this baby. A piece of myself. Now I want you all to look at it, judge it. Tell me what’s it worth, and value me for it” This is pretty much the culture of creating and it is HARD and can get messy and often is the reason for all the erratic behavior and unhealthiness wether internally or externally that you see in a large portion of our creative communities. We were never meant to be scored on a scale, we were meant to create because its our nature, yet at the same time we have to eat and live. It’s a mess sometimes. So be kind to us crazy cats!

Contact Info:

• Website: wegatherpeople.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wegatherpeople/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WeGatherPeople
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVC_s6NcyIH388mbRU-uhnQ
• Other: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWezzPyYAHnxs-lCDuN3_4w

Image Credits
Kym Luce