Creators with an Aim to Co-Create Change

CreativeLive is a company and community of creators: storytellers, photographers, producers, designers, engineers, editors, and entrepreneurs who come together to make creative education accessible to all, with the goal of helping everyone live their dreams in career, hobby, and life. In acknowledging our intent, we must also acknowledge we have only scratched the surface of our goal. This is the case for various reasons, but key among them is Systematic Racism and specifically our unintended role in that. It has stopped so many people from the access we so deeply desire and NOW is the time where we triple down and demand of ourselves that we do better. Even though it’s assured this will happen in an awkward, imperfect, uncomfortable way, we must do better. We will make mistakes along the way, we won’t get it “right,” but we will accept that as an infinitesimally tiny, burden relative to the burdens that others must bear for justice. We will keep working at it. We want to be a part of the solution.

To this end, we are actively educating ourselves on our privileges and biases and committed to doing so in an ongoing, sustained way. To be clear: we are too late to this effort. We have ignorantly at times been a part of the problem. Even with whatever good we have done in some capacities, we have fallen short in too many ways that have always been in our control. But we are taking action and changing – as fast as we can. We are listening to black voices. We are taking action: donating money nationally and locally, committing time and other resources, consuming diverse art, seeking and celebrating more diverse creators for our platform, and we pledge this, always forward from here. We are creators and we are committed to co-creating the change we want to see in the world.

As one small step to better help our internal CL team we put together a *working and evolving* list of sources to better educate ourselves and provide support, broadly aggregated and curated from online sources… Although it was intended for internal use we thought it might be of value and interest if we were transparent and shared the earliest draft with our community. It’s wildly imperfect and impossibly incomplete (it will never be complete), but here’s where you come in: we’d love and encourage you to share with us – here or anywhere CreativeLive can be contacted – share more resources, black-owned businesses, black creators, black thought leaders, films, art, books, and organizations that we can add to the list.‘

Update: At CreativeLive we are continuing to work toward a more equitable and antiracism future in our country, community and company. We are actively changing the lens in which we view the world and we are bringing change by giving a platform for BIPOC perspectives to be heard.

In the short time since this blog post was published (June 3), we have worked to diversify the people and perspectives we share on CreativeLive. One data point is that 67% of the creators we’ve had on the platform to this date are BIPOC. For example, we have had social rights activists like Luvvie, Roxane Gay and Ijeoma Oluo on to speak to how our country can change, we’ve had creators like Reyna Noriega, Steve Sweatpants and Elise Swopes share the importance of representation across every industry and we have had innovators like Omari Salisberry and Polly Irungu show us how small steps every day create change.

This is just the beginning of what our future holds… more coming soon – stay tuned.

Leaders / voices in the black community highlighting ways to get educated, stay involved and support:

Follow, Listen & Amplify Black Voices

Brittany Packnett Cunningham

Some nonprofit organizations that support black communities. If you are looking to use your dollar to express your support, this is a good place to start:

Black Nonprofits to Donate to:

Black Visions Collective

Reclaim the Block

NAACP Legal Defense Fund

Black Lives Matter

National Bail Out Fund

George Floyd Memorial Fund

Showing Up for Racial Justice

Campaign Zero

The Loveland Foundation

The Marshall Project

Color of Change

Bail Out Fund Google Doc

Organizations on the frontlines of justice for black communities:

Organizations to follow:

Audre Lorde Project

Color of Change

The Conscious Kid

Equal Justice Initiative

Showing Up For Racial Justice

Every signature matters. Here is a list of petitions that support social justice and Black Lives Matter:

Petitions to Sign:

Color of Change

We Can’t Breathe

Justice for George Floyd

Justice for Breonna Taylor

Justice for Tony McDade

Justice For Big Floyd

Justice for Ahmaud Arbery

Hands Up Act

Murder Charges for all 4 Officers

More Petitions to Sign

Take action in whatever way you can. Here are resources to find your local rally, graphics to show your solidarity and other actions you can take to support antiracism:

Find Your Local Rally / actions you can take:

MB4L – A Week of Action

Emergency Virtual Town Hall (June 3)

An Anti Racism Exercise

social assets to share

BLM chapters

Educate yourself. You don’t know, what you don’t know. It’s time to take a look at our history as a country to better understand how people of color have been disproportionately affected.

One of the best ways we can support the black community is to be conscious of where we spend our dollar. Below are lists of online shops, local businesses and artists that you can start supporting now: