We asked some of the most talented folks in the community to talk to us about projects they’ve worked on that they still think about, projects that really meant something. Have you had such an experience? Are you looking for inspiration for your next project? Check out the stories below, they are exciting, entertaining, and most importantly – inspiring.

Tara Pirayandeh

It’s a hard question to respond!
I am filled with an overwhelming sense of gratitude.
Music has been my constant companion, my confidant, and my passion. It has given me a voice, a way to express the depths of my emotions and the richness of my thoughts.
Pursuing a degree in Film Scoring at Berklee College of Music is a dream come true. It’s a culmination of years of hard work, dedication, and persistence. Read more>>

Bethi Lewis

One of the most meaningful projects that I’ve worked on is the song “Love is Just Around the Corner.” The song is about going to my grandparent’s house as a child. My grandparents lived in Huntsville, TN with my older sister but most of our family lived in Michigan. I reached out to all of my cousins and family friends and asked for their memories of visits there. Most of us were never there at the same time but we all share the same sweet memories of my grandparent’s home. Read more>>

Mathilde Merlot

The most meaningful project I have worked on was my first novel “Death at Vassar”. When March 2020 hit and the confinement obligations spread throughout the world I was half amused at the fact that everyone was concerned about now knowing what was going to happen next, how their work was going to be impacted. I had been freelancing for a long time and was familiar with this uncertainty. I knew I had to focus on a project. I had finished writing a bible for a TV series my co-writer and I would not be able to pitch given the circumstances. So I asked if I could take one of our episodes and flesh it out into a book, to which he enthusiastically agreed. I wrote “Death at Vassar” quickly and excitedly. On the contrary to being a screenwriter where you are the first link in a long chain, being an author meant few people, if any stood between my readers and myself. Read more>>

Mallow Frenchie

One project I’m particularly proud of is our partnership with PAWS4you, a local non-profit animal rescue. After winning an influencer competition, we were fortunate to receive a generous donation from Toyota, which we were able to direct to the rescue’s efforts.

Then last year, Mallow was chosen to be the celebrity judge for their HowlOWeen costume contest! We had so much fun helping raise awareness and sharing their adoptable dogs with our followers. Read more>>

Christine Winburn & Dylan James Shaw

MamaSon’s most meaningful project has been the lifelong and joyous leap into the world of professional musicianship. It all began with a Go-Go Dancer/Singer/Disney Corp. grandmother named “The Gypsy Dreamer.” She instilled a dreamer’s childlike fantasy of entertainment into Mama (Christine Winburn) as a young child, where there were no boundaries to reaching for the stars. She moved to NYC, got an apartment in Spanish Harlem and began to realize Christine’s successes in commercials, movie soundtracks, Broadway, Off Broadway, etc. That same vision of music and entertainment exemplified Christine Winburn’s life later on, with unmatched and wild accomplishments such as performing at Madison Square Garden, Sesame Street, CBS and FOX tv. Read more>>

Ana Flavia Veiga

One of the most meaningful projects I’ve worked on so far has been Palmas, a documentary that confronts viewers with the haunting histories of the Kizh-Gabrieleño tribe, the evictions at Dodger Stadium, and the symbolic palm tree in Los Angeles. This triptych narrative unearths the buried voices of the city, and its themes resonated with me on a personal level. As someone from Brazil, the palm tree carries deep cultural significance for me, which made this project especially meaningful. Although I hadn’t previously produced a documentary of this scale, my amazing director, Aric Lopez, trusted me with the role and gave me the platform to grow. This experience allowed me to shape both my voice and style, not only as a professional but also as a creative. Read more>>

Jessica Gillespie

The most meaningful projects I’ve worked on always happen to be the ones that help people or directly impact the community around me. One that stands out in my mind happened precipitously when a friend called me on the phone exclaiming that her community garden was at risk of being closed by the landowner. The irony of the entire situation was that the landowner was a Presbyterian church which was being run at the time be an interim pastor who had not been handling their position of power in ways that benefited their congregation or the community (i.e ending long running programs and services for no apparent reason). This particular garden on the South Side of Chicago was extremely important to the neighborhood and surrounding areas as it provided thousands of pounds of food for a free local pantry throughout the year. Read more>>

Paz Suay

One of the most meaningful projects I’ve worked on was establishing in 2015 the art program for the first Montessori and British school in Valencia, Spain. First, I created a program for Children’s House students (3 to 6 years old), and over the next two years, as the school needs expanded, I developed an art program for 6 to 9-year-old students or, Workshop I. Read more>>

Beth Robison

On January 31st, 2025, the Adams State University Chamber Choir, for whom I am the director, performed at the Colorado Music Educators Association (CMEA) Conference in Colorado Springs. Our program, A Vision Unfolding: Building Hope through Connections, was representative of the Adams State Music Department’s ETHOS: Exploring Equity through Music initiative. This initiative celebrates the diversity of our students, explores the universal language of music through different cultural lenses, encourages programming music by underrepresented composers, and recognizes music as a voice for change. Read more>>

Michaela Křenková

I think my job in general became very meaningful as to me as to my clients .
As a young teenager I suffered with not knowing who I am , where I belong and especially accepting my body and existence. We live in world full of expectations and lined up journey how to become good part of system that I don’t even think works well. Judgement and fast growing enormous amounts of informations over internet makes people very confused . Is the happiness we all run after even happiness? Read more>>

Sage Lin

The project is about one of the most powerless moments I experienced, which was when the dog I cared for in Taiwan passed away while I was in the United States. Intent on handling this emotion thoughtfully, I chose to preserve the beautiful memories of her rather than succumbing to anger and sorrow. Read more>>

So far and it’s a short story. Since art discovered me at the age of 54 am now 55 so you see it’s a short story, a short story with a huge impact with myself along with others. You see at 54 I thought most of my life was over when in fact it was just beginning just beginning for the first time of my life. I was and still am disabled with chronic spinal pain along with nerve pain and other things. I was an addict dealing with addiction trying to mask the past. Lots of trauma. Then while visiting an art studio they encourage me to try a hand at painting but with no art background I did not see what they was seeing. So with the encouragement of especially one artist I tried painting and not knowing how to draw I just started just feeling and putting paint to a surface and it just clicked and within my first year and painting almost everyday my life began to change and to my surprise my works where being noticed by others and the Metropolitan Arts Council ask me to do a exhibition and although I did not think my paintings where worthy of doing a exhibition again others saw what I could not and the birth of my first e exhibition was born and my only goal was for it to touch others others who themselves where going thru there hardships and “ Read more>>

Ella Clover

Every project I’ve worked on is meaningful because I’ve learned something from every one. Every project is a part of the identity that I bring to all future projects. I’m feeling the most impact from my most recent project: The Martini Hour. The Martini Hour is a live variety show in the vein of The Muppets meets The Eric Andre Show. My partner, Joey Povinelli, and I play these goofy, heightened versions of ourselves in a unique live (and taped) show that’s part sketch comedy, part variety show, part concert and part party. Of course this project feels most meaningful because it’s most recent, but more so it just feels SO uniquely me and Joey. I think it captures our sense of humor and sensibilities in the sharpest way possible. Read more>>

Elizabeth Hamilton-guarino

One of the most meaningful projects I’ve worked on is writing the bestselling book, The Change Guidebook – How to Align Your Heart, Truths, and Energy to Find Success in All Areas of Your Life. This book was born from a deep desire to help people navigate life’s uncertainties with resilience, courage, and purpose. The idea for it took shape during a time of significant personal and global change—when so many were searching for ways to adapt, heal, and thrive. Read more>>

Tiffany Anderson

This question is hard because I’ve had so many memorable moments from choreographing and performing a Flash Mob for #TeamAtl Atlanta Super Bowl Host Committee to music videos and stage plays and my now new venture, teaching line dance classes. But meaningful would have to be awarded to my 20 years of coaching the youth in dance. I started with a group of young ladies at Ebster Rec center in Decatur, Ga that didn’t have a versatile dance team at their high school. I was only 22, so with closeness in age, I didn’t only teach them, I actually dance with them. It was a great start on my dance coaching career. I became a middle school dance coach for 8yrs. Read more>>

Kane Smego

It’s difficult to choose, so I’d have to say there are two that stand out to me for different reasons. The first was in 2015 when I applied and was selected to the first season of the Next Level global hip hop exchange program and went to Zimbabwe for a two-week residency as part of a team of hip hop artists representing the elements of emceeing, dance, beatmaking, and deejaying. Before going I think I had made some assumptions about what I would or would not find there, and I was hoping that we would meet some folks with a strong interest in hip hop. Upon arriving to my first day of the workshops I was set to run I found myself among over 25 emcees some of whom were my peers in terms of skill level .Read more>>

Yuying Tang

The 15-minute narrative short film “Ripple Nipple”, which I wrote and directed, holds profound significance in my artistic journey. The film explores a young girl’s coming-of-age experience as she grapples with the changes in her body, her evolving self-awareness, and her shifting perception of the world around her. As my graduate school application film, it was a defining work that affirmed my aspiration to become a director—one who translates personal experiences into cinematic language, forging an emotional connection with audiences through storytelling. Read more>>

Mark Rosman

I wake up each morning driven by my passion to make my next movie project, which I’m excited to say will shoot this fall. This is an autobiographical film that has some fictional elements to it but is largely based on the journey I went through about 10 years ago when my then teen daughter spiraled downwards into substance use disorder. I’ve been a director of family movies like “A Cinderella Story” and “The Perfect Man” and was blindsided when my wife and I discovered that there was a problem in our own family. As our daughter went into treatment, my wife and I sought out support from parent groups, addiction counselors, and parent workshops. During this journey, we learned an incredibly important lesson that is the theme of my film: when we started to look at our own behavior and began making changes, that opened a space for our daughter’s recovery to start. Read more>>

David Chez

Last Spring, my wife and I returned home after back to back visits to LA and Austin. After being inspired and over stimulated by LA street art and the quirky colorful murals of Austin I couldn’t help but notice how drab and colorless my hometown city of Wilmington Delaware felt. This is when I decided to put my fears aside and follow through with an idea I have been toying with since the year prior. Read more>>

Ziyu Gao

I have written, directed, and produced over 5 films in my career but the most meaningful film is a piece that I created this summer titled ‘Ways of Talking’. My films and themes relate a lot to things that I have experienced both as a person of color and as a woman in the film industry. One key theme in all of my films – be it horror, comedy, action – is identity. Specifically, finding your place within the world and understanding your connections to people. So ‘Ways of Talking’, which is a short film from the perspective of a young woman being interrogated by police after the suicide of her brother – it resonates very deeply with me because it speaks to issues such as the lack of communication and stigmatisation of mental health, especially within Asian households. Read more>>

The most meaningful project I’ve ever worked on ended up being the longest for me too; over the course of a year, I completed a 10 piece body of work for my AP Drawing class in my Senior year of high school. If you’re unfamiliar, AP portfolios are driven by an inquiry- a question the artist asks themself to explore for the next 9 months. I chose to focus on the topic of myself, on how I could represent my self image and worth through my art because I knew I couldn’t get bored of it. Leading up to this, as a trans and queer individual, I’d always had a tumultuous relationship with my own image. At some point in the early years of high school, I started covering my mirror because what I saw often made me upset. So, for me, choosing to focus on my own image, without distortion, for an entire year scared me, and I think that feeling was reflected in some of my early pieces. Read more>>

Zai

It’s challenging to pinpoint a handful of projects that have resonated with my heart over my seven-year career because each one has served its own unique purpose. When I first started posting on YouTube, I was creating purely out of expression—the need to bring my ideas to life outside of my head. I was young, with little direction, but I knew one thing: I couldn’t be told *no*. That mindset still holds true today because every “no” is just a faster route to a “yes.” Ultimately, every project I’ve agreed to has nourished my soul in its own way, which is why it’s difficult to single out just a few that stand above the rest. Read more>>

Anfisa Brewer

The most meaningful project I have worked on would be Dirty Bones… people often assume I’m running a business here and at one point I definitely was, but as I’ve grown & changed, so has she! Sharing art with people, connecting with them on a personal level, and being able to bring light and hope into people’s lives through teaching has been so incredibly inspiring and healing for me. Read more>>

Shawnelle Dodds

I have received some requests over the years that brought tears to my eyes. For example, one time, when I was working at the Three Rivers Arts Festival, I was asked to draw a woman who had no hair due to cancer chemotherapy. They described her hair and asked me to draw her with hair instead of leaving her bald. Of course, everyone started crying at the final project, which prompted me to cry as well. They said I nailed it, which was nice considering I was scared I would mess it up because this was the first time I had ever done something like this. I was also honored to do a commission piece of a family with their deceased dog. I turned him into an angel. Read more>>

Mallory Corr

One of the most meaningful projects I’ve worked on recently was photographing Clairo’s Charm Tour for Polyester Zine. I started photographing concerts and musicians around the age of 13. I’d camp out for hours, sneak around barricades, and tuck my pink point-and-shoot into my bra to get past security, all for the chance to capture photos I’d be proud to put up on MySpace and Flickr. Read more>>

Lindsay Johnson

The most meaningful project I’ve worked on is the creation of Architects of Tomorrow (AOT)—an organization built on the belief that love is a revolutionary force capable of reshaping the world.

AOT was born from a deep frustration with how society operates—how people talk past each other, how empathy is often dismissed as weakness, and how the structures we live within are designed to divide rather than unite. I realized that if we want to build a better future, we can’t just work within the systems we’ve inherited. We have to architect something entirely new. Read more>>

Brandon Lott

A meaningful project I’ve worked on is BLUBiRD, my upcoming debut album. After losing my father in 2020, going through a failed engagement, and facing unexpected health challenges, I had to embark on a deep healing journey. It felt like releasing a butterfly from a mason jar—letting go of pain and grief to gain new perspectives. In that release, the fog lifted, and hope returned, much like spotting a bluebird in the sky—a symbol of joy and renewal in Native American culture. BLUBiRD represents that transformation: making space for new light by letting go of what no longer serves us. Read more>>

Daina Mattis

I generate ideas, not just objects. My third solo exhibition, Forever Wild, Oct 28- Dec 17, 2023, at High Noon Gallery in New York City, focused on our fragmented relationship with the natural world, highlighting tensions that exist between memory and loss, actuality and artifice, technology and grief. Oozing with the romantic mental image of a cologne that Johnny Depp might be selling, Forever Wild, on the contrary, is a term coined and adopted in the late 1890’s in order to protect land from the logging industry in New York State, establishing the 6 million-acre Adirondack Park as the nation’s first Forever Wild classification. Emblematic of my practice various materials, processes, and images coalesce to mine deeper cultural and biological crosshairs, for example: in the entirely analog paintings Field Studies, the idiom “Keeping up with the Joneses” Read more>>

Paris Holmes

My most meaningful project has to be completing my first feature film script entitled “Lust Angeles” This was a script that took me a little over 7 years to complete. It was much easier to write when I wasn’t busy freelancing as a cinematographer and gaffer. Other people’s work just got in the way and I ended up pushing it to the side. I feel like it worked out for the better because I got better at writing and came up with a much cooler story plot. Read more>>

Natalia López

This last year has been all about new endeavors, and pushing myself. The most meaningful projects I’ve had are my recent live painting performances. I’ve done two so far, and it has been career changing. My first performance was at THE EFFIGY with musician and fellow artist Robert Aquatic in Oct 2024. The more recent of the two being at POWERS OUT with Briannin Gross at The Coven Phoenix. This was as a collaborative project at Danielle Plaza in January of this year. I never thought of myself as a performer let alone thinking people would enjoy watching me paint. We’ve all heard the expression “watching paint dry” to describe something boring but that’s exactly what people were doing! Read more>>

Cybil Lake

I’m currently working on a project called Malibu Mother of Two. It’s a dramedy about Nina, a popular New York wellness writer and influencer, who flies to L.A. with her two boys while struggling to remain sober and close the open marriage she thought she wanted. Read more>>

Jacqueline Johnson

I am a small animal veterinarian and my kids always love hearing about what I do at work every day. One day, my husband said jokingly, “You should write a book.” And suddenly that seemed like a great idea! It wasn’t long before I self-published my first picture book called “The Doggy Doctor and the Upset Tummy.” It was a great experience learning not only about writing, but the publishing industry from artwork, book design, and printing. Read more>>

Jiazi Yin

The most meaningful project I’ve worked on is a body of work titled Lucid Dreams. I began this series as my MFA thesis at American University and have continued to expand it over time. Lucid Dreams uses landscape as a vehicle to investigate my shared experiences living abroad as an immigrant and the psychological experience encountering two distinct cultures. Read more>>

When I was a tween, I was deep into fandom culture. Before that, my media diet mostly consisted of TCM movies—because after cram school, that’s all that was on. TV was strictly forbidden except on school breaks, so I had to rely on a strong imagination to fill in the blanks of the shows I’d miss. Because of that, I accidentally became a classic film buff. Read more>>

Anna Harsh

In sixth grade, I had an assignment to create a vision board that reflected my goals and dreams. My vision board reflected dancing professionally, traveling to Italy to meet lost family and see the Pope. Fast forward to my senior thesis project in college as a dance major, which led me to a meaningful project that changed my life. My quest was to research and find traditional Italian dances, write my final thesis paper and perform it. This was challenging without the internet in the 1990s. So, I studied with instructors that trained in Italy and had the historical dances I needed to complete my dance degree. Read more>>