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

Hi Damon, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

Actually, as a nonprofit I do not own the business, but I have been at Access Gallery for 27 years, so I am inexorably tied to this organization in this particular city, Denver. I see the journey of this organization and my journey of creativity to be one in the same. I think my “big idea” was at about 20 years doing art programs, running a gallery, and working to increase access to the arts for people with disabilities I realized we were solving the wrong problem. In the US people with disabilities are unemployed at a rate of 70-90%. It was nice that we were exposing people to art, but I realized if they did not have money for the bus it really did not matter. In a little over a year, we rewrote the mission to include economic opportunity for people with disabilities and made this our focus. Since this change the organization has more than quadrupled in terms of budget and people served. We went from one location to three. I remember the day clearly when I realized we needed to change our focus. We primarily work with artists that have intellectual or developmental disabilities. By focusing on what our artists can do instead of the limitations our society puts on people with disabilities we are able to leverage the creative power we all possess. I have recently turned some of my creative energy towards taking some of the lessons learned at Access Gallery and applying them to older individuals. Not only are people with disabilities living longer than ever before, as we all age we are more than likely to experience disabling conditions. I recently turned 60 and for the first time I am part of the community I serve. It was another aha moment for me.

Damon, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

This is a bit of a loaded question for me. I am the Executive Director of an arts organization in Denver, Colorado, Access Gallery. I have been in this position for 27 years which in and of itself is remarkable as most Executive Directors stay at a nonprofit for 2.5 years on average. For a very long time I would tell people that I was not creative, I was just the administrator. Shortly after my mother passed away, I began my own journey back to the creative soul I had as a kid. Like so many people I was convinced there was not a path forward for creativity as a career, I went to college, got a degree, then a job, a wife, a house and a kid all in pretty short order. I remember in the interview for this job they asked me if I was an artist. I replied quite honestly no, I am not an artist. Along the way I realized that I was expressing my creativity through the work. I was not a very good administrator, but I had a knack of putting things together that somehow helped people with disabilities to express their creativity and make money, all the while denying my own creativity. This changed about the time we changed the mission of the organization and about the time my sustained an injury that kept me from working, for the first time in my life I was temporarily disabled. Between ramping up a new mission and running back and forth to the nursing home I would get home exhausted. I felt like the world was just coming at me and I had no real control over anything. During this this time I did something I had not done since probably middle school – I picked up a sketchbook and doodled. I doodled every day when I got home. I now have close to 50 sketchbooks full of random stuff, I started to explore my creativity and realized, like so many people I had confused creativity with artistry. I now draw, write, take a photo every single day. My drawings suck, but the creative process of being messy of being able to make mistakes and learn from them have changed how I look at the world. I now consider myself a creativity consultant not an administrator.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Interestingly, I am pivoting as we speak. Having accepted my true gift in this world is helping people discover or rediscover their creative genius I find myself at an interesting place and time. Having grown my organization from a staff of 2 to a staff of 10 and still growing my day to day is very different than it was even a year ago. Where I used to have to be the jack of all trades going from selling a piece of art to a case management meeting with a client to taking the trash out. I realized I thrived with the creative side of things, the let’s make things together but as we grew, and grew fast, my role had to adapt, and I find myself again in this work. I have made no secret that I do not like administrative tasks but found myself abdicating the creative for the immediate. I am currently pivoting and owning the fact that a lifetime of knowledge and nearly 30 years with the same organization has value above and beyond the bottom line. I am working to accept my own creativity as an asset. One that can help others discover or rediscover their creative voice. I do a lot of work in the creative aging space and see I was not alone when as a child I put away my creative interests for more “productive” pursuits. I am pivoting to understand myself as a commodity, I love to teach, I love to speak, I love when I can do a team building workshop around creativity using stickers, duct tape or six word stories. This time is very different that measuring myself or my organization by budget size or accurate tax filings. It is still a journey. I have done a few keynote speeches and am working on a book about what I have learned from people with disabilities who have been such a part of my life since I was 13 years old.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I am still unlearning the lesson of society telling us the value creativity when society actually values conformity. As I lean more and more into my creative consulting, I realized how often I did not take a risk. It was safer to stay the course and not rock the boat. Somewhere I had stopped trusting that small gut feeling. I made a couple of bad hires because someone else said this person or that person was what we needed. I had a side business fail spectacularly. Again I did not trust my gut. The lesson I unlearn every day is that nagging voice in the back of my mind that still tells me I should not be here. I think this reawakening is partially age and partially because I have had enough experiences that when I trust my gut things work out, when I don’t trust my gut things sometimes go sideways. Don’t get me wrong I have learned a lot from my mistakes and failures and take the responsibility of having a staff and a community of artists rely on my decisions, I do my due diligence and research but have promised myself to always, always listen to my gut moving forward.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.accessgallery.org
• Instagram: @nomad727
• Other: I would love to work with anyone or any organization that wants to discover or rediscover the creative genius we all were as six year olds.