Our Mission, Vision, and Goals

By Jeff M. Poulin

A few weeks ago, my colleague, Bridget, wrote a blog post sharing our new brochure, which encapsulates a months-long process of clarifying our work, intent for the future, and how we wanted to sustain our collaborative to accomplish it all.

She said:

“We aim, always, to walk the talk, so we went through [the Adaptive Impact Planning] process ourselves and emerged with a new mission and vision, a bunch of goals, and a long list of values which guide our work and ways of working.”

So, for the next few weeks, we want to spend some time sharing with you all where we landed and how we will be approaching our work moving forward.

Today, I wanted to talk to you about our mission, vision, and goals.

Our Mission and Vision

If I am being totally honest with you all, our previous mission – which I really did love and thought was innovative at the time – was drafted on the back of a napkin in a restaurant bar and dirtied with French fries.

As a true start up, Creative Generation’s history sometimes feels like it is out of a movie. In short, I began some research, shared my findings which got people talking, and then engaged in a few follow up projects that required a bigger team. The new (small!) team, got working and eventually we were asked for our mission and vision… and over a meal, we drafted one. It stuck.

Two years later, though, we had grown to a team of 18, working all over the world, and used our mission and vision as a touchstone to guide our work and its intent. So, we really needed to put more thought (not just some French fries) into it. We did – and here is where we landed:

Creative Generation collaborates with young creatives and those who cultivate their creativity to take local actions towards global changes in pursuit of a more just world.

I love this mission because it focuses on a few key aspects of our work:

  • First, it starts with exactly what we do: collaborate. Our team members collaborate with each other.  Our collective collaborates with other people, projects, and organizations. We rarely do anything alone. It’s the best way to work in our opinion!

  • Second, it names our two primary stakeholders: 1.) young creatives, and 2.) those who cultivate their creativity.  We have always had a two-pronged approach dividing our work into the support of amazing young people doing amazing, creative things and the support of their adult allies working to change the pedagogies, practices, policies, and pathways of doing the work itself.

  • Third, it names the “what” of our work: taking local actions towards global changes (and most importantly) in pursuit of a more just world. Everything we do with our collaborators is local, yet we seek to uncover the keys to scaling every learning to those who may need it worldwide. Those local and global actions, well, they are all grounded in a justice-orientation – that’s our biggest goal.


In tandem to this mission, we also articulated our vision, which is here:

Simply put – youth create change. Maybe a tagline, but definitely our vision. That’s what we believe (and what we believe our work can do).

As we grappled with this, we realized this vision had three sub-points to it. Inextricable beliefs, which underpin this vision:

  • All young people are inherently creative and can apply their creativity to animate new futures – some of this may sound familiar and some of it may sound new; that’s because it comes from our core beliefs and is enhanced from our early research.

  • Creativity can be cultivated through intergenerational relationships based in arts & cultural learning environments – you may also see similarities between this belief and some of our values.

  • Change is natural and progress is necessary within ourselves, our organizations, our communities, and our world – this is no doubt influenced by the times we are currently living through.

Together, these three beliefs undergird the broader vision and inform both the work we do and the way we do it.

Working Towards Our Goals

As we thought about how we work towards this vision and achieve our mission, four goals emerged from a process of examining our past, current, and future work:

  • Empowering young creatives and their communities, by providing a hub for stories, resources, and opportunities.

  • Producing new and honoring existing forms of knowledge and ways of knowing, while dismantling systemic barriers to sharing and learning.

  • Expanding definitions of and pathways to leadership, through unique learning communities.

  • Activating people and projects, by redistributing resources of money, time, and expertise.

We, at Creative Generation, believe that these four goals can be our signposts towards the future we envision. Since we don’t every quite know what work is coming our way, these give us the first grasp on where we believe we should be headed. 

Landing on these goals was an interesting process. First, we conducted an analysis of our work: What have we done in the past, what are we doing currently, and what do we hope to achieve in the future?  

Once that information was compiled (sticky notes, flip charts, galore!), we had to start to focus things. So, we turned to our valued. (You can read more about these in a future blog!). We spent some time thinking: How do we operationalize our aspirations through a values-based lens?

This gave us our first draft – it was five, at first – to which we reconciled with our current team, programs, and resources. And bam! There we were. Our four goals. 

Where Do We Go From Here?

As we continue to move forward, we invite our community into our process. (You will see in an upcoming article that one of our values is ‘transparency’). We will continue to report out and look forward to hearing from you, too.

It is our true belief that our process can inspire others. We wish to be not only an example, but an inspiration for a values-forward and adaptable approach to organizational development.

Stay tuned for more.