One of the most powerful things you can do as a leader is articulate things that are not yet clear
The Voice Lab is a fellowship for leaders of color who are articulating new ideas and creating new forms. It is a yearlong cohort experience, hosted by Edge Leadership (an R+D platform for social change at NPQ), in developing your unique creative voice.
Creative Voice is…
Style
The look and feel of your work; the repeated marks
Skill
Your ability—deriving from your knowledge, practice, aptitude
Subject Matter
What you find interesting, meaningful, beautiful, repulsive
Medium
The substances and tools you use to form and express your voice
Consistency
The ultimate expression of your voice. The elements repeated within and across your works*
Participants begin with a three-month discovery phase to gain clarity about the purpose and direction of their voice. They spend the next six months learning techniques—writing, online learning, podcasting, and social media influencing—and producing work, while developing their own creative process. The last three months, participants focus on curating a portfolio, distributing it on the NPQ platform, and preparing for distribution beyond.
Developing creative voice is transformative for the individual, the creative cohort, the field, and society at large. The lab is an initiation in bringing forth a community of authentic voices of social change. In particular, it promotes knowledge creation by people of color in civil society, because this knowledge is subordinated and critical, especially now.
*Congdon, Lisa. Find Your Artistic Voice. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2019.