We were lucky to catch up with Olivia Jimenez recently and have shared our conversation below.
Olivia, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?
In the beginning of 2019 I found myself going through a period of creative burnout working full-time as an artist/creative. Piecing together gigs as a theater-maker, teaching artist, and movement instructor was exhausting physically, mentally, and emotionally. I was surviving, but barely. Survival wasn’t enough anymore, I wanted to thrive!
To me, that’s meant finding a balance between the creative work I’m passionate about and the stability of a “regular” job — a consistent paycheck, health insurance, not feeling like I had to say yes to every gig just to get by. For better or worse, I’ve rarely been afraid to start something new or to make big changes in my life. Thanks to some good connections, good luck, and good timing, I was able to enter a completely new field and find roles that let me bring my artistic and creative skills to the table without constantly being in survival mode.
Jumping into the Creative Community Development field, I had this ‘aha!’ moment: the more I heard about the work, the more I said to myself, “Oh, that’s me! Those are all the things I do!” Looking at my CV, you might describe my work history as eclectic (read: chaotic), but I’m able to bring so much of my experience to this work- finding creative ways to engage with communities, telling the stories of people and places. For me the best part is that while I have that stability I needed to set myself up for success, I also have lots of room to get creative and expand my artistic practice: I’ve helped to paint murals, design immersive installations, and tell stories in many different ways.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My first love was the theater, but I quickly found myself drawn towards non-traditional and participatory performance- projects in which people who aren’t actors or playwrites have their stories told onstage or even step into performance roles. Some of my earliest training was in Theater of the Oppressed, pioneered by Augusto Boal as a way to empower oppressed peoples and engage communities in solutions-oriented dialogue. This style of performance is deeply interactive, with audience members stepping out of their roles as spectators and onto the stage as “spect-actors.”
I’m also a lifelong student of movement- sports, dance, martial arts, etc. – and became a certified Yoga Therapist in 2018. These physical practices have shown me over and over again the importance of embodiment, mindfulness, and play. I strive to integrate those principles into all of my work.
I’m especially passionate about sharing these tools and artforms with people whose stories are often ignored or overlooked. That’s led me to working with lots of different people over the years– youth, seniors, folks who’ve experienced homelessness and/or incarceration, people living with the stigma of mental health or disabilities. Usually, I’ve worked in partnership with justice-oriented and community-based non-profits who have similar goals. In 2019 I joined the non-profit affordable housing sector full-time. In my current work, I collaborate with community members to tell their stories in a way that supports their goals, which have included entertainment, education, healing and sparking sociopolitical change.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
In my experience most people have an artistic or creative side, but very few of us have the privilege or ability to pursue full-time careers as creatives. To that end, most of these suggestions apply pretty broadly beyond folks currently working as artists and creatives: Pay us! And create infrastructures that let us have the stability of so-called “real jobs” without killing our creativity. Instead, acknowledge that our creative work is REAL work, that our artistic skills are REAL skills and hire us to think and work like artists. That means allowing us to have time that may look unproductive- time to think and process and dream. It means giving us the flexibility manage our own schedules- most working artists I know are amazing at multitasking and project juggling, but might not work best on an eight-hour business day schedule. It means giving us space for creative play and passion projects- these are the things that help us come up with all those creative solutions.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?
Over the years, I’ve found that I absolutely must do work that sustains me in some way beyond just paying the bills. Many times, I’ve found myself a “regular” job to help pay the bills and, inevitably, it’s unsustainable for my physical and mental health. Lacking a creative outlet, working for a company I disagree with, doing a job I hate- all of these create a level of stress for me that leads to extreme burnout. I’ve suffered from severe muscle spasm, horrible stomach issues, and dangerous levels of depression that all but disappeared once I left the job in question. On the other hand, if I am doing work that I’m passionate about and enjoy deeply, high stress situations (long working hours, multiple complex projects, difficult people, quick turnaround on deadlines) leave me relatively unfazed.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ixplorelab.com
- Instagram: @ohheyoj
- Other: www.oliviajimenez.com
Image Credits
Bill Ledbetter, Errich Petersen, Madison Raye, Olivia Jimenez