“To come together…is to remember all that we forget to tell ourselves when we are working alone.”
—Camille Endacott, Q partner and graduate student studying organizational communication
It takes effort to gather– undoing entropy always does. To come together, though, is to remember all that we forget to tell ourselves when we are working alone. To gather with others is to remember who we are as creative people and to be strengthened for the work that we were afraid to pursue on our own.
I have seen what ending isolation can do. I saw it happen after I drove the 12 hours across the desert from Los Angeles to Ghost Ranch in the summer of 2015. And I see it happening now, as AROHO gathers again to equip women for their creative work.
In my time as an intern for AROHO in 2013 and again in 2015, I was deeply intrigued by the relationship between creativity and community. As I watched women work together and encourage one another, I was so curious to know just how such organizing could occur, sometimes across vast physical distances, and what these connections offer that isolation does not.
Now, as a graduate student in the field of organizational communication, I am honored to revisit the questions that still fascinate me. As a partner of AROHO, I invite you to participate in our on-going exploration of how creative communities can be formed, reformed, and sustained across time and place.
I am deeply grateful to hear your responses as we learn how communication – the voice we seek out, the stories we tell, the words we offer each other – can bring women out of isolation in their creative work.
Thank you for all that I have learned from and through you and thank you in advance for your participation in this exploration.
Eagerly,
Camille