We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jessica Pitts a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jessica, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s talk legacy – what sort of legacy do you hope to build?

I hope that my legacy will be one of love and community, of guiding children towards embracing their own innate creativity and humanity, of providing families with a place to connect to each other in meaningful ways.

I hope others will see bravery and continue to walk their own brave paths. I hope there will be laughter and joy. I hope there will be messes sometimes (and there definitely are messes in my classes), because life is messy sometimes. I hope families will realize that there is still beauty, laughter, and life lessons in the messes.

I hope others feel safe to show up authentically in my space and I promise to show up authentically as well.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Firstly, my friends call me Jess, which means you can too. Secondly, I’m a Board Certified Music Therapist of 12 years, former licensed early childhood music educator, and mom to three creative children. In January of 2022, I added owner and Head Creative of The Kids Creative Space to those titles. The Kids Creative Space is my heart dream. It is a space where children from birth through elementary can come and explore open-ended thematic creativity in the form of music, movement, and making. I run classes for newborns through preschoolers. I run camps for elementary aged kiddos. I do birthday parties and private events. I’m very fortunate to have some great site partnerships at the moment as I work towards opening my own studio.

I started The Kids Creative Space because I fully believe the future belongs to the creatives and the creative spirit in our children needs to me nourished. Right before I started The Kids Creative Space, I was teaching an internationally recognized early childhood music program and while I loved the program, I wanted more freedom in what I was teaching. I wanted the ability to hold space for the kids to come in and lead the way in terms of their own creative needs and desires . I wanted children to be able to dance and sing and paint freely (with safety parameters, of course).

Creativity in any form whether moving or writing or playing an instrument or drawing or thinking outside of the box is bravery at it finest. The world can be an unkind place and even in the midst of that we must keep our creativity alive so that change and progress can happen.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I was in the early childhood education world in some capacity for almost a decade before I started my business this year. That experience lends me a lot of credibility as do my credentials. I have a degree in music therapy and I am a board certified music therapist. In all honesty, there has been times where I have not wanted to renew my board certification as I’m not currently a practicing music therapist and there are things that I don’t agree with in that particular field. But I keep it because it has shaped how I approach my programming and does provide the families that I work with some level of confidence in my skill set, until they get to know me on a more personal level.

All that to say, don’t be closed off to the certifications, continuing education, and credentials within your field if you have the ability and finances to pursue some of them. They are certainly not the be all end all in your business, but they can be helpful!

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

My business is very small and brand new, not even a year old. So it will be interesting to see how this changes for me as I continue to grow. Right now, my growth has been almost entirely from word of mouth and my business’ social media pages. I’ve tried other marketing opportunities such booths at local events, sponsoring different events or paid social media advertisements. They just haven’t panned out well for me.

I also have seen growth around being intentional with my site partnerships. It has been a little trial and error, but the current site partnerships that I have are really doing quite well. I’ve had to let go of others because it wasn’t the right fit for my business.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thekidscreativespace.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thekidscreativespace/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekidscreativespace
• Other: Email: [email protected]