Working on something meaningful is a common desire – but how? We started asking folks to share the story of how they ended up working on a project they felt was meaningful because we wanted inspiration but also because we wondered if hearing from people from across a range of industries would help us identify patterns making it more likely for anyone to be able to find and work on projects that they would find meaningful.

Lyricl Nkechi

Being utilised as a creative resource effectively through performance poetry, DJ/Music crowd engagement MC’ing, Words & Wellness Art Therapy or Pastoral Support Mentoring, I have seen numerous outcomes through community kinship artistic awareness and empowerment in both an insightful and enriching way. No one situation outweighs another due to the importance of representation as well as being the vibrant voice for unheard or somewhat silenced marginalised groups. Read more>>

Malcolm Jackson

The most meaningful project that I’ve worked on so far is my most recent album, Recollections. This album connects many aspects and experiences into a body of work that acknowledges the past, showcases the present, and a look towards the future. Most of the compositions that are on the album were written during my high school years at HSPVA. I was able to recall the fond memories, the aspirations that I had, and the importance of being involved and having long lasting connections with my peers. Read more>>

Maya Robinson

One of the most meaningful projects I’ve worked on is an art installation called “The Tent,” a project I completed for an installation art course in 2015. The installation was a small tent filled with personal mementos like letters, souvenirs, receipts, gifts, and clothes—all sentimental of course. I made an audio track and soundtrack that visitors could listen to while interacting with the physical items. In the audio track, I shared the story behind each keepsake. The soundtrack played a selection of songs that were connected to the mementos (for example, through special moments and memories). Read more>>

Meghan Bernard

I have been a potter for close to 20 years. It has been my full time profession for the last 10 of those years. I started making and selling my work right out of college. My wheel that I still use everyday was a graduation gift from my grandma Edith. Potters require some space to work and that was always a challenge. Every rental my husband and I rented needed a clay room. My studio set up has evolved from a kiddie pool in a spare room (so I wouldn’t destroy the carpet), to sheds, sunrooms, basements and barns. We finally built my dream studio last year on our property. Read more>>

Michael Robinson

PINKMOON a conceptual mixtape made when I was 18 years old I am 19 now. It’s not my best sounding project but it’s my favorite. this mixtape is as SoundCloud as it gets but still sounds so mature gluing the whole concept and world together. What really makes this project my favorite is all the emotions, time, work, and pain into it (again emotions).
But if it wasn’t for a girl I was loved with but hated at the same time the project wouldn’t be a thing so I thank her. Pinkmoon is a world. A colorful dark world everyone is cool, everyone knows each other but doesn’t know each other at all. That’s the perfect way to explain my generation and the people that’s in my world. Everyone is themselves but labels are still a thing. Read more>>

Michael Cotey

In 2018, I was in rehearsal when we got news of the Parkland school shooting. The room reacted as you might imagine: outrage, pain, sorrow. A lot of people asking, “How does this keep happening?” And then rehearsal resumed, almost like this horrific mass shooting never happened. This really bothered me. Have these events become so normal that putting on our play can feel more important than a mass shooting? I decided at that moment that our field needed to respond in a show of solidarity that, no, this is not normal. In the theater, we need material to rally around; a story to tell, but the material didn’t seem to exist. Read more>>

Natalie Singletary

In 2015-2016, I wrote a small story to cope with the emotion distress I was experiencing with my group of friends at the time. When I wrote the story, it was a way to speak to those friends of mine without having to have an actual conversation. Alas, we don’t associate much these days, but I do wish them the best in their endeavors. I wanted to burn the hard copy and delete the files, erasing it from existence, because despite it being a coping mechanism, it was painful keeping it around when those in the pages were no where to be found at the time.  Read more>>

Patrick Mcandrew

I have worked on so many meaningful projects, but one of the most meaningful projects I have worked on is actually still in development. I am working on a new musical called, “The Startup,” with an incredible team of artists. The show explores our relationship with technology and Big Tech’s influence on society. This project first formed through my own research, reading, and observing on how social media is affecting the mental health of so many people, especially on younger generations. In addition to that, the various stories that have come out about Big Tech companies using our data against us helped inspire the show. Read more>>

Pearl Dick

One of the most meaningful projects I’ve been a part of is Project FIRE–a trauma recovery program for young people in Chicago who have been injured by gun violence. I was teaching glassblowing lessons to a pediatric ER doctor at a South side children’s hospital who was treating youth who came into the hospital with gunshot wounds only for them to show up again and again re-injured. She found glassblowing and our time together to be helpful in her own healing journey. She connected me to Dr. Brad Stolbach, a clinical psychologist who specializes in child trauma who was offering mental health services for people in the hospital and together we conceived of and started Project FIRE, combining art making as a means for expression, healing, and connection and psycho-education to help people understand the effects of trauma in their lives. Read more>>

Raj Bhattacharyya

I have been fortunate to direct and produce many theater shows over the past three decades, and each one holds a special place in my heart, allowing me to grow as both a creative and an enabler. However, if I had to choose one project that stands out as the most meaningful, it would be founding DFW Play—a home for Indian theater in North Texas—and the journey of making it sustainable. DFW Play was born out of a deep desire to build a vibrant artists’ community locally while preserving and advancing the rich tradition of Bengali theater through enlightening entertainment. Our first production, ‘Dream On,’ told the story of a struggling immigrant artist from Kolkata trying to make it in New York City.  Read more>>

Rich Johnson

Suni Lee Mural and music Project with Lil Crush, Sunny Sota, Mn Fats, Executive E, Noval Noir, MK and Suni Lees Family and Friends. Read more>>

Scott Shapiro

The most meaningful project I ever worked on was a pilot called GOODMAN I sold to Warner Brothers in 2020. It was based on the true story of my Grandfather, a conservative Jewish man, who turned his run-down dive bar on Chicago’s Whiskey Row into one of the city’s first underground Gay bars, back in the mid-1950’s. After having staffed on shows like USA’s NECESSARY ROUGHNESS and CBS’ NCIS: NEW ORLEANS, GOODMAN was the first project that I had created and it was an incredible experience from start to finish. Read more>>

Seeking Therapy

Every song we write is meaningful in their own way. Our first single “Come with fire” and the subsequent music video release was extremely meaningful to us as it got our music and our faces out to the masses and has since created some buzz for us in terms of booking gigs and online content engagement. Read more>>

Sha Ked

For me, meaning comes from what makes me feel like I’m actually doing something – which can seem impossible as a musician.  I remember seeing a poster someone put up for a climate festival that they wanted to start… and it caught my eye. I scanned the poster and told them I needed to be a part of it. Sofia, the festival’s founder, called me and we started working on what would become a beautiful musical and ecological experience. Read more>>

Shania Lee

One of my favorite projects took place in 2019. I went to Europe and shoot for the Homeless World Cup. It is an organization that uses football to tackle homelessness and social isolation. We were there to follow selected players and capture their stories. I was assigned players from Pakistan and South Africa. The week with them gave me a better appreciation for their culture. Read more>>

Sophia Wolov

Over the years, I’ve worked on many projects that have been meaningful in different ways. However, the project that will forever be etched in my memory was for the Scales Conservation Fund. This NPO does incredible work for endangered animals, and I was fortunate enough to produce a video for them about the most endangered species in the world: the pangolin. Read more>>

Sophie Tran

Working in media for decades, I have had many opportunities to do fun and exciting things from meeting celebrities, traveling, getting special access to amusement parks to tasting food from top chefs around the world. Yet nothing compares to the way Mommy & Me Vietnamese fills my heart. It all started 35 years ago when I was a baby, my parents could not find Vietnamese nursery rhymes for me to listen to and so they created their own.  Read more>>

Sophiyaa Nayar

My most meaningful project to date is my short film, CHHAYA, which is set to have its World Premiere this September. CHHAYA blurs the boundaries between fantasy and paranoia, beginning with a South Asian woman’s absurd experience at a gynecologist appointment and unravelling into an investigation of a sexual assault survivor’s fragmented psyche. The inspiration for CHHAYA is intertwined with the stories from the Mahabharata that I grew up with. Read more>>

Steven Prouse

My novel Handlebars has to be one of my more meaningful recent projects. I took a break from writing for about a decade and only started again when I incorporated it into writing for my sons. I wrote a few short stories, including my children’s book Sammy the Squirrel-tle, at first. Handlebars was the first novel I wrote and gifted to them.  I conceived of the story in 2016 while watching a Trump-Clinton debate with music playing in the background (they really didn’t deliver anything of substance to listen to). Handlebars by the Flobots came on and I focussed on that song instead. During that debate, I tried envisioning either candidate as a child riding a bike… and I couldn’t. Two people vying for one of the most powerful elected seats on the planet, and I couldn’t picture them as children at play.  Read more>>

Thomas Ouziel

The beauty of this field is that there are a multitude of meaningful projects that all hit home in different ways. Every narrative film is coming from directors with different perspectives and with personal stories to tell, all influenced by their unique life experiences. Our job as sound designers is to delve deep into the heart of each of their stories and find a way to evoke the underlying tone and experience they’re trying to capture. Trying to understand all the elements that constitute their vision is a core tenet of our work – the themes, the psychology, the humanity behind their stories. Read more>>

Timothy Boggs

This is a complicated question for me to answer. I’ve worked on a number of meaningful projects and feel humbled and grateful for the opportunities I have been gifted. But determining the most meaningful is like choosing which child you prefer. So let me list a few of my projects and why they are meaningful to me. As a Sound-Supervisor and sound editor for movies and television shows, I contributed to some classic projects – “Bend it Like Beckham,” “Lost Highway,” “The Bucket List,” “The Sopranos”, “Breaking Bad,” “Fargo,” “Queen Sugar” and many others.  Read more>>

Todd Scalise

When I decided to leave the steady life of a college professor and dive into my art, I was ready for whatever came my way. I cashed out my 401K and moved to Santa Fe. I renovated a studio space to focus on my work and took a gallery job to keep things afloat. As I started networking, I connected with people who knew Dennis Hopper. We got to know each other, and as they became familiar with my work, I found myself drawn into a project honoring Dennis for his lifetime contributions to independent film in New Mexico. Given his history with the state—during the filming of Easy Rider in Taos in 1968 and later making it his home—this recognition was deeply significant. Read more>>

Viktor Hübner

I first arrived in the United States during the summer of 2017, but America left an imprint on my imagination from an early age and long before walking the land itself. As a bookish child, I grew up in a small German village in the countryside, reading not only classics but also American novels and comics and consuming cult films; I romanticized the American Way of Life. Thus, I carried in me the dream of coming to America. I wanted to see it with my own eyes. Hear, smell, taste, and feel it. Read more>>

Vincent Sordini

The most meaningful project that I have worked on was my most recent album, ‘CHEAP VACATIONS.’ Each album of mine has been more important than the last for a variety of reasons. In this instance, CHEAP VACATIONS was me going back to my roots, which is sample-heavy production with an old-school hip hop feel. That is what I grew up on and tried to emulate when I first began rapping, but as I made more music I moved away from that style. Coming back to it after a couple of albums was very fun and reaffirmed any doubts I had about my ability. Read more>>

Work N Days

One project we look back fondly on was a collaboration with choreographer Durante Verzola at the Guggenheim Museum’s Works and Process evening. With art by Angela Lyn and an original composition by by Jesse Bannister, Work N Days was commissioned to produce costumes for a piece titled, “Passage – in the wake of the world” choreographed by Verzola. This was our first costume commission and the first time we had traveled for business. Seeing them onstage for the first time was surreal, it was an experience that gave us a newfound sense of confidence in our abilities as creatives. Read more>>

Yalin Zhao

I was introduced to independent documentary film (ethnographic films to be more specific) during my college years in Hong Kong. I started to make my own documentaries in 2014. It has been an eye-opening experience as a way for me to know the surroundings. In my first documentary film Haoqi Shin (Perfect Imperfections) I have spent one year and a half living with a queer couple as a person who identify herself as straight. Reflexively speaking, I did have a lot of curiosities and even assumptions towards them, but finally it turned out to be a touching “normal” love story. It is not only a documentary about those two lovely characters but a growth story of my own. Read more>>

Yi-chien Lee

One of my most meaningful projects was designing the set for TICK TICK BOOM at Cygnet Theatre in San Diego in 2024. This musical by Jonathan Larson, known for Rent, explores an artist’s struggles with life and the pressure to succeed.  For this project, I aimed to capture Jon’s creative chaos and personal aspirations. I designed an immersive apartment set with a standout feature—a window that transformed into a bodega storefront. We also used the theater’s layout to bring actors closer to the audience, creating a more intimate experience and deepening the connection to Jon’s journey. Read more>>

Yuhui Qi

One of the most meaningful projects I’ve worked on is Organisms Utopia. This speculative design project envisions a future where humanity has evolved to live harmoniously underwater, alongside marine life forms in a balanced ecosystem. The concept emerged from my fascination with how life on Earth might adapt to a world dominated by oceans. What sets this project apart is its innovative approach to blending art and technology. By utilizing 3D printing, heat-shrinkable sheets, and UV resin, we’ve created wearable art pieces that simulate the sensory experiences of future marine organisms. This hands-on approach allows us to explore and visualize a new kind of human-marine symbiosis in a tangible way. Read more>>

Yuxuan Huang

The most meaningful project I’ve worked on is called Lost Stories. It features a collection of furniture and objects that reimagine antique pieces through a deconstructive lens, preserving the stories of people and objects lost in time. By encountering furniture that has outlasted its creators—those who lived with it and left their marks on it—the collection seeks to foster a sense of humanity by uncovering the encapsulated stories and memories of these objects. Read more>>

Zack Baltich

In May of 2024, I released Estuary, a collaborative album that was created over the course of four years. the project was led by me as composer/percussionist/piano/samples/synths, with vocalist Ritika Ganguly, guitarist/singer Ilan Black, and fiddle player Cam Fassett. A reference to the point where the tidal mouth of a large river meets other water, creating unique ecosystems and drawing in wildlife, Estuary is a meeting of language, genre, ideas, and textures in search of new ways of musical expression. Read more>>