We recently connected with Christopher Padgett and have shared our conversation below.
Christopher, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
About nine years ago, I was at a low-point in my life. I had made choices I wasn’t proud of, I had lost relationships, and I had moved miles away from my home to stay close to my daughter. In many ways, I was more alone in my life than I had ever been. I looked at my life and saw the ashes of what I tried to build. I thought about the stories I had chosen to believe in my life that set me on a path that led to ashes.
In the middle of this, I began working at a community garden in the town of Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, a town where I now live. I began helping construct a prayer labyrinth there, a circular path designed to walk, meditate, and bring your questions to God. And especially, to listen. It was there, I walked and listened and waited for God’s voice to talk to me about my own healing.
Over the course of that summer, I began listening to the people who would walk by the garden, to residents in the county I live in, Beaver County. I worked to quiet myself and create space. They would share stories of their thriving towns and the steel mills. They would share personal stories of grief over loss and trauma, but they would also share stories of what it meant to look for new life amidst struggle.
As I listened, I heard hard-earned wisdom, beauty, and humanity I had chosen to not see for so many years. It was out of these shared stories that my business, Human City Creative, was formed.
I saved up money and purchased a camera to begin to record the stories I would hear in my community, and began to call myself a community documentary filmmaker. Working with film had been a passion of mine since my father had created home videos of our family when we were young, but now I understood how healing and storytelling could work together.
I began to understand the universe of our internal experiences and our external experiences. I began to understand the way we believe stories about ourselves or each other is connected to our own healing as individuals or communities. I wrestled with questions of storytelling with justice, seeking dignity and authenticity.
Now, years later, my mission is the same as when it began all those years ago. Human City Creative’s mission is to use story-telling to listen, share and preserve stories of people and cities in process; to connect community by seeking understanding, grace, empathy, and celebrate the value of one another.
Creating space for others is difficult in a busy world, but listening is possible still in quiet moments we carve out for each other and ourselves. And the people and their stories of who they are, are more valuable than most anything you’re likely to come across. I’ve glad I get to do this work in our area, and the seeds that were sown into my life from the people around me, many of whom I get to now call “friends.”
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Specifically, what I do is create short documentaries in the area where I live. Aside for creating documentaries that highlight individuals in our area, currently I work with a few non-profits as well.
RiverWise is a non-profit dedicated to help grow community agency and voice, and to move together with community toward a better and better quality of life in our area. For this organization I might find myself highlighting stories of community organizing, momentum around quality of life initiatives, and issues facing the community.
The Genesis Collective is a non-profit that exists to support artists and their work, increase the public’s access to art and creativity, and entrench art in and around community development in Beaver County, Pennsylvania. At times my work consists of creating films to highlight cultural diversity and the arts in our area.
Crop and Kettle is another non-profit that I do documentary work for, where I share individual stories of neighbors who are learning culinary and agricultural arts as they move forward in their lives.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
Over the past 20 or so years, there are two things I find most helpful for sharing what I create with others.
One; Listening and sitting with others. It’s easy to care about what you create, but there are so many others out there working hard to bring their visions to a reality as well. Be willing to share your gifts with whatever capacity makes sense to you to collaborate and invest in community together where you live. It’s one of the most satisfying life experiences I’ve had creatively.
Two: Just start doing it. The more you create specifically what it is you do as an artist, the larger portfolio you have and the more practice you will get developing your craft. No one will understand what you do, unless you create it and they experience it. So most of my creative journeys in life have begun with me starting to create and then continually showing what it is I do and not showing what I don’t do.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
The most rewarding part of being an artist for me is when I am done creating and it resonates with someone. If one person feels seen, heard, or can relate to a piece I’ve created then I know that something had connected with the viewer and the sharer. It’s in this space that empathy in storytelling can sometimes be found, which is one of the more beautiful things in life to me. Empathy can join together with listening in a beautiful mix to hear each other more clearly, and to lay down our defenses in the common space that we all share: that we are all wrestling with the complex idea of being human and being mortal.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.humancitycreative.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/humancitycreative/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/humancitycreative/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopherjpadgett/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@humancitycreative
