CuriousWorks' recent Fat Chats of 2024, led by Kiriaki Zakinthinos, was all about purpose.

The space gave us the golden opportunity to dig deep into our own WHY and CuriousWorks' WHY. What are our values? What exactly drives our work? Why are we passionate about what we do? What do we want to achieve?

To guide our thinking, we listened to Irresistible (fka Healing Justice Podcast)'s episode 41 Practice: Rooting in Desire with Samia Abou-Samra & Ije Ude of Turtle Tank, which was shared to us by Andrea Lim.

We were guided by thought provocations posed by Samia & Ije, whose framework was rooted in recognising and naming your inner desires in order to clarify your essence statement. Here, essence statement refers to the very backbone of what makes work truly meaningful.

Over the 40 minutes of the podcast episode, we listened to their insights and worked through their thought exercises. With our trusty pens and papers, we all took pauses to individually reflect upon and write down our answers. We then shared and unpacked our learnings across the team to see where the mutual threads are and to understand our individual and common purposes in our work.

Across the board, we found that we were all heavily guided by wanting to nurture gentle ecosystems of care and trust within the work that we do. Safe spaces held by empathy that doesn't grow stagnant. Safe spaces held by empathy that don’t grow stagnant. Safe spaces that allow storytellers to create art on their own terms. Safe spaces that encourage people to grow and outgrow. And work that quietly disrupts and transforms.

In discussing the arts and cultural landscape that we wanted to help create, we likened our collective thoughts to that of a wildflower garden. It's untamed and not always palatable, but it is deeply rooted in place, love, community, and care. It is these intersections that we are continuing to harness in our essence statements in both the CuriousWorks context and in our own livelihoods. Stay tuned for our further reflections and learnings as we take some time to review what we need to bring all of our essence statements to life.