I’ve often made the joke they’re like mushrooms. Another one springs up every time it rains. And it rains A LOT in Atlanta….
Two nights before we wrapped Treasure Maps, I was sitting on my front porch on a sweltering summer evening, looking at my overgrown yard, thinking about what it would be like when life wasn’t quite so busy again. Given that it had been such a large and ideal manifestation of my work, I was already suffering from postpartum depression. To combat it, I started to imagine what my next body or theme of work might be.
Earlier that day, a neighborhood Facebook group, maybe it was on Nextdoor, was filled with a long thread of discussion bemoaning the imminent demise of a well-loved shopping center on South Moreland. In its place will rise another one of these work-live spaces we’ve come to know as an inextricable part of urban development.
As I sat there, swatting mosquitos and dreaming about how storytelling can facilitate action, dialog, and change, those words and that angsty conversation...live…work…space...came floating back through my mind.
These are, um, interesting (?) times everywhere in the world, here in Atlanta no less so than others. How we live, how we work, how we create space, share space (or don’t), are all in new phases or redeveloping phases of conversation. A storytelling initiative that comes under the title Live. Work. Space. gives us room to talk about gentrification. To have more stages with people who are unhoused.
It gives us a chance to examine our stories of how the pandemic forced us to collapse down life and work into the same space over the last couple of years, and how we’re now teasing them back apart but in new ways that are being re-defined.
As fast food chains are offering $100 signing bonuses, it opens up a portal to the stories of how people don’t want to go back to the jobs they once had nor be treated the way they used to be. In short, we are in a moment examining our whole sense of purpose.
I see this not as one single project, but as a long arc of work that may stretch out over many years, weaving in and out of StoryMuse’s tapestry.
Look forward to seeing where this next part of the journey takes me and how it leads me to journey together with you. Please feel free to be in touch with your thoughts, ideas, and potential partners!