We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Benjamin Burke a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Benjamin, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you tell us the backstory behind how you came up with the idea?
About eight years ago, I had moved into a communal creative space of 30 people and after a year we got served with eviction notices as the owners were going to sell and the place would be demolished for condos. We residents decided to raise the money to buy the place instead and I realized we needed a website and a video — to tell the story of this special place for fundraising. I realized that I knew how to do that, having spent 15 years in the performing arts telling stories from a stage. I had to go to India for a project at this time so I went and wrote the copy for the site while I traveled. I met an Indian man who wanted the same kind of help for a village building project of his own — a sustainable creative community built from scratch in the desert. He especially wanted the words to have a poetic feel and was thrilled that poetry was how I first started writing. I realized this was something most people eventually need. Authentic, emotional, resonant stories succinctly told. And in both instances, it worked. We raised the money and saved our community and the India project was successfully launched. In both cases, my work was greatly appreciated and valued and it paid my rent. It also felt really good. I’ve been at it every since.
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.
I’m a storyteller and creative consultant. I started in the performing arts, telling made up stories onstage, from poetry to music to theater. Eventually I realized there was no need to make up stories to tell — the world was filled with incredible true stories that weren’t just worth telling, they needed to be told. Having started as a poet, my main goal is always to achieve resonance as quickly and simply as possible. In today’s world, that’s the thing that always needs doing. Most of what I do is writing, some design, occasional directing, and usually some creative strategy. Copy, presentations and talks, scripts and videos, and sometimes performances — telling the world about someone’s project and work, often for fundraising or community gathering purposes. Always for good causes. My specialty is land-based community building projects and I’ve recently decided to also focus best I can on science advocacy, especially regarding climate change. One aspect of this work that I didn’t anticipate was the therapeutic benefit for many of my clients. For those with a truly personal and important project, the process of discovery we engage in, the questions I ask them, finding the reasons they do what they do and why they’re doing it now — it’s a lot like therapy. Along the way I often end up helping them tackle their own personal issues — how to stay organized, how to present themselves, how to show up in the world and do what they need to do.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
Today I would say I’m just trying to light as many lanterns as I can, including my own. I get most excited about projects that are not so much consumed with fighting a current system as they are with building a new one, building the new world. That said, there’s still plenty of fighting to go round and I’m always game. I’m a big Bucky Fuller believer. Rational, creative thought and compassion. There’s enough for everyone, we just designed things wrong. So I try to help the people who are trying to correct that. That’s why my current focus is on building sustainable, resilient and creative communities and helping scientists get the truth out there and absorbed. In the last few years I also got back into performing. I have a poem band called Shape of the Moon with some amazing musicians and when we play it’s meant to be more of a healing, improvisational, weird yet deep experience. Soothing. Usually outside under the stars with immersive sound. As a much more intimate and immersive experience, this really rounds out my mission in life. Hanging out with sweetheart music wizards and trying to help a bunch of people get grounded and good feeling for a night. I just want things to be simple. And fair. Less selling, more building. It is the great tragedy of our time that perhaps the greatest miracles in the universe — sentient beings on a random rock in an infinite void, capable of contemplating their own existence as well as limitless acts of creation and ingenuity — have had their incredible powers largely if not singularly consumed and/or infected by the necessary act of selling things to each other. I work for the day when we are all able to spend a whole lot more time just sitting around creating things and connecting with each other.
Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?
Word of mouth and traveling the world as much as possible while talking to as many people as I can. I often travel for projects and work and when I do I am constantly on the lookout for kind, interesting people doing interesting work, especially those looking to build community. So I follow the golden thread. I go to interesting places and I chat people up and we resonate. And they hear about what I do and often I’ve arrived at just the right time to help them with their project. Serendipity seems to be a key factor. Which is exciting but obviously hard to control. But it makes for good stories, which is probably the best way to describe the logic behind the decisions I make in life. Alignment. One way or another, I’m just trying to make a better story. And my favorite story is the one that begins with the incredible miraculous fact that we are living on a planet — one which is perfectly, precisely suitable for life and sailing through the stars. Also, look at the moon. It’s right there.
Contact Info:
- Website: benjaminburke.com, sunlightfilms.org
- Instagram: @appliedpoetics
- Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/benjamin-burke-99010841
Image Credits
Portrait by Mikko Toiviainen