We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Lucy Garrity a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Lucy, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
My work is inspirational and educational storytelling, through video, writing and speaking. Inspirational stories are often about non-profits and thought-leaders. My favorite is sharing stories of actual people who I help tell their own stories and the resulting video/audio/writing projects have often been healing for many people. The educational work has been broad; everything from medical training to business, IT, and law. I think all my projects are meaningful! However, one stands out above the rest and this is an online training course I led a team in developing just as we were coming out of COVID.
The online training course was about Regenerative Agriculture. Have you heard of this? Basically there are practices, that farmers and ranchers can use for their operations, that create good beyond the expected: These practices heal depleted soils, support financial and operational independence for farmers of all sizes (which supports rural communities), create more nutrient-dense foods (which translates into healthier consumers), sequester carbon from the atmosphere, and support diverse species of all types (which supports broader environmental health). Through developing the course I essentially took a deep dive into 8 different topics that relate to farming and ranching in this model. It was life-changing for me personally, as I saw a topic that could potentially bring together people of different political views as well as heal people and the planet: Such potential!
Here’s the thing that really inspires me from this project. Regenerative Agriculture has direct and obvious application for farmers and ranchers, as well as gardeners and managers of public open spaces and greenways. However, underneath these practices, the farmers and ranchers I worked with were most passionate about the mindset that “regenerative” practices gave them, and this attitude can benefit any and all of us. A “regenerative” mindset approaches life (human and the planet) like a curious child. When I adopt this mindset, I become less interested in what I know and more interested in what I can learn, and the world becomes more beautiful and wonder-ful, no matter who I am, what I do, how or where I live. How inspiring!
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 dreamer and a maverick with a big heart. In the late 1990s, the internet was in its infancy and most people only saw video through television and movies. The opportunity of this kind of messaging struck me as potentially impactful and I decided to learn video production. Lucid Narratives evolved from creating documentaries for cable, then for our local PBS station, then for a small company that used video for CD ROM training purposes. When this company folded, I started my own video production company.
My early work was with an international nonprofit, Easter Seals, Inc., where I honed a documentary approach to helping people tell their own stories. This became the core of my business. Along the way I’ve explored psychology, healing, trauma, martial arts, dance, spirituality, economic development, recycling, music, naturalist training, international travel, school gardens… What I find is that this eclectic mix of explorations and experiences may be the most powerful gift I offer clients: It helps me craft video, written, and spoken messaging that can reach broad audiences and move people deeply. My clients report extremely effective fundraising and successful/committed learners (for the educational work).
How do you keep your team’s morale high?
Film or video-making is a team sport: Everyone contributes expertise that creates the final audio-visual story. In video this is much less formalized, but the underlying respect and give-and-take is still incredibly valuable to the end product. In managing teams for bigger projects ($25,000 – $250,000), I’ve found two things from video teamwork to be crucial to the team’s success in delivering projects on time and in budget. The first guide is mutual respect, understanding that everyone has something to contribute, no matter how subtle this may be. When we respect each other as professional contributors, we listen carefully to one another, show up to and end meetings on time (respecting everyone’s time), and we consider different ways of doing things from our own. The second guide or rule is we do what we say we’re going to do. I once managed a team where one person never made her own deadlines. I too have fallen prey to this jokester! It is demoralizing to others who are trying to deliver their pieces on time and if a project has dependent deliverables (my work flows from yours) then the whole chain can be stressed. Another trick I like to employ is humor: Sometimes we all can take ourselves too seriously and it’s good to have a team rule that humor is invited (respectful is non-negotiable and irreverent can be magical). Finally, as team lead, sometimes I need to inject a little extra caring – bring unplanned food, celebrate a small win, start a meeting with a silly Calvin and Hobbes comic, etc. Teams are wonderful and often stronger when they go through challenges. It’s worth investing the time and energy in going the extra mile as a leader.
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
I think being creative has allowed me to trust my journey and often led to better solutions than I initially imagined. In addition, as challenges have arisen, being creative has invited unexpected solutions and led to insights and ideas that expanded both my business and who I am as a person. One non-creative “expert” in my life invites broad input and is a good listener, she seems to considers different ways of solving problems. All the same, her solutions often revert to a linear or familiar approach, and this has prevented her venture from having a bigger impact than it does. I’ve seen scientists, engineers, doctors, researchers, and business people struggle with ideas that are “out of the box” or less verifiable. This in turn has sometimes led these people to diminish the input of their creative colleagues. In larger organizations, thinking as a “creative” can make for much more cross-fertilization of ideas between areas of expertise. As an example, the head of a major scientific institution shared that he was looking to replace retiring scientists with new experts who have artistic hobbies. The benefit of the combination was scientists who could relate to and understand scientists in other areas, leading to a more effective organization.
Contact Info:
- Website: lucidnarratives.com
- Instagram: lucid_narratives
- Facebook: Lucid Narratives
- Linkedin: lucy-garrity
- Youtube: Lucid Narratives Video Production
Image Credits
We took these photos internally so we have the rights.