VALUES

The team at Creative Generation believes that how we do our work is just as important as the work itself. As a collective, we are guided by our values and commitments within each and every project we pursue.

Centering Creativity and Curiosity

We encourage creativity and curiosity, both within our processes and as outcomes from our work.

Pursuing Justice

We adopt a justice-oriented approach for our work, grounded in anti-racist, queer, indigenous, feminist, and restorative justice practices.

Stewarding Youth Power

We know that young people are inherently powerful agents of change and we strive to be responsive to and supportive of their leadership.

Fostering Intergenerational Collaborations

We approach every project through an intergenerational lens, through meaningful and reciprocal relationships.

Honoring Diversity and Enabling Radical Inclusion

We recognize the past and commit to taking radical action, both internally and externally, to deconstruct systems of oppression and exclusion.

Recognizing Our Privilege

We acknowledge our individual and organizational privilege and approach our work with humility, patience, and generosity.

Investing Resources Strategically

We believe that resources are not equitably distributed and work to redistribute time, money, and expertise accordingly.

Operating Transparently

We understand that collaborations thrive in open and honest environments and we strive to create spaces for our team, collaborators, and community to hold us accountable.

Valuing Process over Product

We value people over profit, process over productivity, and quality over quantity.

Inspiring Joy

We seek to find joy in the projects and relationships we develop through our work.

Commitments

To animate the above values, Creative Generation has articulated a set of commitments, which frame our work as an arts service organization focused on capacity building and learning. 

• We commit to being values-forward in our work, enabling our values to drive our actions.

• We commit to co-create the sustainable capacities within individuals, teams, organizations, and collectives needed to achieve their objectives, ultimately making our role redundant. 

• We commit to transparency, documentation, and distribution of how and what we learn: we believe that insights uncovered from collective work are vital knowledge to enable the communal progress of our field.

• We commit to acting in service to our stakeholders and the broaders fields within which we work.

Acknowledgement, Responsibility, and Reparations Action Plan

As a values-forward Collective, Creative Generation seeks to embed meaningful actions within our everyday work to foster accountability, repair historic wrongs, and pursue justice. 

Catalyzed by the racial reckoning in 2020, it became common place for organizations to engage in actions or processes towards reconciliation—like recognizing Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC)-focused holidays such as Indigenous People’s Day and Juneteenth, issuing statements proclaiming Black Lives Matter, or articulating land acknowledgments ahead of place-based gatherings—without enacting systemic changes towards dismantling the root causes of White supremacy and resulting patriarchy, heteronormativity, ableism, capitalism, etc. 

To live our values, we believe more needs to be done to move past performativity; thus, we have embedded several strategies within our regular work to achieve sustainable, everyday, and systemic change.

Our Collective members live all over the world, on land that was taken from the indigenous people of those regions. We want to acknowledge all the indigenous peoples and communities whose land we inhabit and upon which we work:

Canarsie, Munsee Lenape
Cayuse, Umatilla and Walla Walla, Duwamish, Suquamish, sduk'albic' (Snoqualmie), Muckleshoot, Stillaguamish
Cherokee East, Tuchi, Shawandasse Tula (Shawnee)
Cherokee, Osage, Satsoyaha (Yuchi), Shawandasse Tula (Shawnee), Hopewell, Adena
Eora, Dharug
Gauigu (Kiowa), Osage, Wichita, Comanche, Kickapoo
Jewed, Akimel O'odham (Upper Pima), Hohokam
Mvskoke (Muscogee)
Nipmuc, Popcumtuc, Nonotuck,
Osage, O0ga0xpa Ma-zho (O-ga-xpa)(Quapaw), Ochethi Sakowin
Osage, Shawandasse Tula (Shawnee), Monogahela Culture
Peoria, Bodwewadmi (Potawatomi), Myaamia, Kaskaskia, Kiikaapoi (Kickapoo)
Piscataway, Nacotchtank (Anocostan)
Susquehannock, Piscataway
The Wabanaki Alliance, which consists of the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians, Mi’kmaq Nation, Penobscot Nation, and the Passamaquoddy Tribe including the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Motahkomikuk and the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Sipayik