Ty Bradford takes the stage

I don’t know about you, but the first thing that comes to mind when I hear the word “tradition,” is the Broadway musical, Fiddler on the Roof. It’s almost instinctual for me to start bellowing out Tevye’s classic song about tradition. Yes, I occasionally have to stop myself mid-note when the word comes up in casual conversation.

The second thing that comes to mind when I hear the word “tradition,” is holiday festivities, especially around Christmas. Even if you don’t celebrate the Christmas holiday, it seems everyone has a sacred tradition (the word of the day!) this time of year.

One of my traditions this time of year is getting our family Christmas Tree through the Christmas Tree Program from the National Forests. Every year on the weekend after Thanksgiving, we load up the car with winter gear, cutting tools and Thermoses filled with hot green chili and start the journey over the Front Range and down into South Park. After picking up our permit at the Ranger Station, we head out to the Pike National Forest. We make a whole day of it, stomping around in the woods and cursing sharp pine needles. Inevitably, it’s the first tree we find that we take, but we still explore the forest for hours anyway.

Once we have the perfect little pine, we lug it down to the car and try to remember how we tied last year’s tree on the car. I swear, the configuration of ropes and tie downs is different every year.

Traditions are an important part of life, but they’re not just reserved for Broadway musicals or holidays. We might have traditions about what we wear to sports games so our teams will win. Or how we cook a family recipe for tomato sauce. We even have traditions for how we approach our work. Traditions provide structure, guidance and a way to remember what has gone on before us. They’re a way to find harmony in community and a source of peace for an individual.

Tradition unites all of humanity. Not one person, culture or country is without traditions. Our traditions may be different, but each one celebrates those around us and the things we all find most important: our family, our friends and our community.

Join us for The Designers Challenge LIVE for our next happy hour on November 13th from 4:30pm – 7:30pm at Four Winds Interactive, 1221 Broadway, Denver.

We partnered with The Design Kids Denver and Vitamin T to invite some very talented local designers/creatives to show off their skills to our community by designing LIVE on the spot.

Come learn from the greats and hear them talk about their process while watching how they execute. This will be an amazing opportunity to gain new perspectives and learn fresh ways to approach design.

Registration will open up on the CreativeMornings/Denver website Tuesday, November 6th at 9am.

Contestants:

·         Kiwi Schloffel of Craft Boner

·         Haylee Powers of Bad Bitch Branding

·         Andrew Hoffman of Andrew Hoffman Design

·         John Vogl of The Bungaloo

How will this work?

Each contestant will have 24 hours before the event to prep, plan, sketch, take photos, anything they need to prepare to bring the designs to screen! And on the day of the event, they will have 45 minutes to design, LIVE!

Schedule for Event:

4:30 // Doors Open at Four Winds Interactive

4:30 - 5:45 // Drinks for anyone 21 and over, and mingling

5:45 // Doors Close. There will be NO ENTRY after this time

5:45 // The Designers Challenge LIVE Starts

5:50 - 6:35 // Designers have 45 minutes to bring their designs to life, LIVE on the screen, while Daniela Silva Riera, our MC, interviews each contestant and learns about their process.

6:35 - 7:00 // The Judging Begins

7:00 - 7:30 // Open Panel

7:30 // Event ends

Our Partners

CreativeMornings is the largest face-to-face community in the world. With 190 cities in over 60 countries, and 307,000+ people who have attended morning events. CreativeMornings is traditionally a breakfast lecture series, where each month a live event is hosted where people in cities all around the globe can come out, meet one another, and listen to an inspirational talk.

The Design Kids is a global online resource and works with 100+ design universities and colleges, 500 design studios, and many more design businesses.  Their community of 70,000 students and grads continues to grow and help individual emerging designers succeed.

Vitamin T is a talent agency for digital creatives and the design-minded companies who love them. Their local team in Denver is one of the Denver chapter’s morning event sponsors.

To celebrate 5 years of CreativeMornings in Denver, we would like to turn the mic to our audience. We’re inviting anyone interested to apply to be a speaker at our 2nd Audience Takes the Stage event in November.  The application deadline is MONDAY, October 22nd at 11:59:59pm MST, and we will announce the chosen speakers on October 26th.

November’s theme is RESTART. Does your story have a big restart in it? Does the act of restarting play a big role in your creative process? Do you have another unique thought, perspective, or background related to the theme?  

Head on over to our application page and submit your idea of what you’d like to present!!  We want to know about it, and we look forward to hearing what you have to say!

Intention…

There is a space between the joy of starting something new and actually making it happen that can make or break any endeavor. It’s not pretty. Unlike joy and elation, this place is the exact opposite.

This space is known by many names: Writer’s block. Creative slowdown. Seth Godin calls it, “the dip.” Steven Pressfield’s name is, “The Resistance.” Here, in the mental murk, is uncertainty and the air is filled with self-doubt. Failure seems to lurk in every shadow.

In between the joy of starting and the elation of success is the treachery and risk. Risk of reputation. Risk of security and safety. Risk of ever being asked to make your work again. There is no map to navigate through this space. The path through is unique to each person. It’s easy to feel lost and unsure. But the guiding star is intention.

Intention is what pushes a writer through writer’s block.

Intention is what causes a musician to keep composing music.

Intention is what drives a designer through the umpteenth version of a logo.

Intention is what stokes the fire within us to make what’s important to us.

Intention is a shape-shifter. At the beginning of the journey, intention is the idea and the destination in mind. It can be anything from a new project to a new career. But when we’ve moved past the joy and curiosity of starting, we’ve entered that in-between space. We start to despair and feel the impossible closing in on us. Intention then transforms into the resolve to get to the other side. The end of the creative process may–and probably will–look different than what we first envisioned. But intention is what guided us to the result.

Following intention is not for the faint of heart. It is risky. You might lose your job. Or your parent’s faith in you. You may lose your sanity. But if you’re willing to always follow your intention, the reward is the fulfillment of purpose.

This. Is. Cider!!!

This month we’re inviting you to join us at Stem Ciders, 2811 Walnut St., Denver, on Tuesday, June 26th, from 4:30 pm - 7 pm.  We’re so thrilled to host our June CRAFT happy hour with Stem Ciders at their fantastic new taproom in RiNo. They are offering some exclusive happy hour specials just for us (YAY!!).  How does a Super Berry Slushie, using Patagonia Super Berry herbal tea from craft tea producer Rishi, sound??  Or how about some of Stem’s own Craft Cider ($7)??  Yummo!!Wait, there’s more…we’re also planning some fun events:

• Show your love for Denver, with our fun CreativeMornings/Denver photo booth!
• Also, be sure to come by early, we’ll be giving out some special CRAFT stickers!
• And we have a fun craft for you!!

Registration opens at 9am on Tuesday, June 19th on our website!  We can’t wait to see your smiling faces!

Your buddies,

The CreativeMornings/Denver Team

Mondays can suck—but we have a remedy for your Tuesday evening…

We’re starting a monthly happy hour series in addition to our breakfast events and we want you to join us! Why? Because we’re so passionate about getting to know our great community in Denver—and we want to share that with you.We’re going to be hosting a monthly happy hour at a local bar or restaurant to give you the opportunity to get to know each other better and talk about this month’s topic and lecture (even if you weren’t able to make it)— all while hanging out at cool spots around the city.On Tuesday, March 20th, our good friends at Ophelia’s Electric Soapbox (1215 20th St., Denver CO 80202) are hosting us from 5pm - 8pm. Ophelia’s will extend their special happy hour food and drink pricing, and also will be creating a special drink and appetizer around this month’s global theme of COURAGE… just for all you CreativeMornings/Denver fans! Registration opens March 13th at 9am on our website. Space is limited, so don’t forget to set your alarm clock and reserve your spot!

Your buddies,

The CreativeMornings/Denver Team

When we hear ​the word “courage​“,​ we may think of superheroes, warriors, humanitarians, great leaders, soldiers, police, firefighters—​people who are quick to act when life is truly on the line, or where the stakes ​between​ wrong and right are ​highest.

But courage​ is more than that. Courage is something we all harness daily simply because we are human beings. We are each faced with our own medley of​ ​challenges, goals, uncertainties, hopes and dreams, resources, real and perceived limitations, skills, and priorities. Courage ​can help us fuel our ​drive to accomplish the improbable and the significant, even when we don’t have it all figured out.

We take leaps of courage daily to expand our potential, and we take calculated risks ​to help us build our futures or serve our communities. We ​also ​leverage courage when we invest in ourselves or other people. Courage helps us ​dance with uncertainty, rather than letting the unknown distract us from the dreams of our intuition.  

Courage ​lets us be audacious with our pursuits and our creativity, even when we are smothered in doubt or hesitation. Courage allows those with even the tiniest voice to be heard, and we call on courage when we speak the truth in the face of wild adversity.

Courage calls on our values and our heart​s​, and is at the foundation of freedom, creativity, and the human soul.

Perhaps courage is the ultimate tool of those who seek to change and create the world?

Come find out and learn more about courage from designer Margaret Cyphers—Creative Director for Google G Suite and Head of UX for Google Drive—this coming Friday, March 9th, at 8:30am at the Denver Art Mus​eu​m.

Can curiosity change the world? Can it help us to be more creative? How does curiosity propel us? Why is curiosity so fundamental to the human experience? February’s global CreativeMornings theme implicitly and explicitly asks these questions and eludes to some of our best collective answers and anecdotes surrounding the value and power of curiosity.

As humans, we have had a strong desire to learn and gather knowledge since it all began! It seems to be in our blood to synthesize our experiences, and skills and passions, and knowledge, and even our inherent human needs, and then ask deep meaningful questions that expand our potential, our understanding, and help us to address important challenges and objectives. We do this individually and collective in all sorts of ways. This affects culture, business, politics, and our very experience as humans.  Our ability to ask, both reactively and proactively, big questions has equipped us to test perceived limits, perceived systems and rules, to expand or deepen our lives and our contributions, to enlighten us spiritually, economically, and politically, to build incredible infrastructure and societies, and to connect and bond with other humans and the world around us.  

We’re just wondering, how does curiosity show up in your world? In your work? In your life?

Join CreativeMornings/Denver on February 6th at RedLine Contemporary Art Center and hear from Derek Friday about how curiosity relates to his personal life and his profession as an Environmental Designer.

Last month we asked you, the audience, to get ready to take the stage in December. We asked for submissions for audience members who wanted to give brief talks on how the theme of CONTEXT has shaped their lives, perspectives, and creative journeys, and wow did you ever respond.

After a rigorous review process our judges have selected the following five speakers to present:

• Meta Sarmiento
• Rachel Bastarache Bogan
• Adrian Gonzalez
• Rhonda Spradling
• Kurt MacDonald

Head on over to the event page for more information (coming soon) about each of our speakers and what they’ll present about.

Thank you SO much to all of the amazing applicants who submitted ideas for this event. Choosing just five of you was an impossibly hard task given the breadth of amazingly creative and talented folks in our community who submitted to speak. We’ll definitely do this again and hope to see you all up on stage one day soon!

To celebrate the end of another fantastic CreativeMornings year, we would like to turn the mic to our audience. We’re inviting anyone interested to apply to be a speaker at our December event.

Our theme for December is CONTEXT, so we’re looking for people to speak about anything related to the topic—how it applies to your work, how it’s changed your career, or how you use it to fuel your creative fire.

To apply, record a short video and submit it via this form. We’re looking for something raw, think “speaking into the web cam” feel. Your video should be on why you think you would make a good speaker and what you would speak about (this should be related somehow to Context). From these submissions, a few will be chosen to give a five minute talk on Friday December 15th at CreativeMornings/DEN at Art Gym Denver.

The application deadline is November 22nd, 5pm MST, and we will announce the chosen speakers on November 26th.

The stage is calling…