We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Joy Donnell a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Joy, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
I’m devoted to narrative change work. This began six years ago when I joined a cohort called 50 Women Can. During that program, the need to compound my storytelling blossomed beyond writing and producing. I wanted to go deeper into transformative stories and equity.
This changemaking is a long road. My work is an invitation to uphold self-actualization as a birthright rather than something that has to be earned. My writing, producing, and even my public speaking have this principle at the core.
I’m working with initiatives that expand our narratives about women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics, and medicine). This project helps the next generation see that anybody can be a scientist, that real competency only exists within diversity, and diversity is our superpower for finding real solutions for humanity’s pressing challenges.
I’m holding space with people and organizations that realize our human need for benevolent community. I recently served as MC for Linc Housing’s 40th Anniversary Gala. Over the past four decades, Linc has built affordable housing for the most underserved by the marketplace. The homes they provide are helping people empower their families, neighborhoods, and cities.
I expect not to see all the ripples of this work. Walking this path is a commitment to plant trees that will cast shade you shall never know.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I’m a storyteller.
Stories are psychospiritual. They can expand our imaginations or shrink our dreams. I lean toward expansion. Expanding our imaginations is anti-oppression; it’s liberation because it centers joy.
My most recent book, Show Us Your Fire, dives into radical self-love. Through poetry, prose, and meditations, it looks at the power of sacred disruption and our human right to self-compassion. It examines how we integrate our whole selves into our own lives. Through memory, mindfulness, instinct, and intuition it looks at the mystical journey of coming home to ourselves.
These poems internalize sanctuary. Inner peace and sacred social space help us produce joyfulness. When we exert our joy we exert our fullness, and that fullness disrupts oppressive systems.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
In the US, we need to keep the arts part of our educational curriculum. We are hardwired for creative expression. Our self-expression forms community. Through the arts, we understand ourselves, our planet, our cosmos, and our place within the tapestry of life.
The arts influences and contributes to every aspect of society. Technologists, for example, get inspired to invent certain tech because they saw it in a comic, TV show, or movie. The arts help us dream and do.
Also, society needs to support universal basic income for everyone. This will help people have more resources, including the resource of time, to pursue creative expression.
Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?
I wish I’d known about artist commissions sooner. I never realized how many exist until I started looking. They require cold outreach, which is risky, and the ability to pitch yourself, which is a skill. But they’re a great way to stretch creatively. Plus, you can apply at any level of your career.
I applied for my first one in 2023 and won it. It was a commission through Artists for Planned Parenthood. I got to create a spoken word film poem entitled Knowing for Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest. This was also my first time creating a film poem from my own original work. I learned a lot of using motion pictures to express the poetic and I plan to do more pieces like this.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doitinpublic/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doitinpublic/
- Youtube: https://youtu.be/s-Lt1A4Df1A?si=z9VtmCjFcNBQvf_q
- Other: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Joy-Donnell/author/B07YYM1CRS
