We are all creative beings.
Your creativity lies within, but quite often schools, workplaces, and daily life lacks the space and time to tap into and explore that deeper part within you. Any number of outside forces can pull you away from your innate creativity, which may contribute to you feeling disconnected from your own being and inner wisdom.
You can be creative in many ways, just as you can be many ways in life. The growth, for both, is in the process and the practice of uncovering what most connects to you and your true inner story.
“Human resources are like natural resources; they’re often buried deep. You have to go looking for them, they’re not just lying around on the surface. You have to create the circumstances where they show themselves.”
Our Story
Angela Craven and Kïrsten Blake first met standing next to each other at a Denver Startup Week Event in September of 2014. Through their initial conversation they discovered that each had lived in Brooklyn and moved to Denver to give themselves freedom and time to explore their interests outside of their 9-to-5 jobs. Angela was working as a UX researcher and strategist and painting part-time, but her desire was to build a business and full-time practice as an abstract expressionist painter, while Kïrsten worked in public education reform and wanted to turn Chapter BE into her full-time business.
During this conversation, Angela also told Kïrsten about her past 365-day project. Being intrigued and curious, Kïrsten interviewed Angela for Chapter BE to share the story of creating every day for a year - Angela Craven Art - 365 Day Project - which then inspired Kïrsten to do her own 365-day project in 2015: #365justbe
From there, they established and grew a friendship, supporting one another in their personal ventures to starting and growing small businesses as well as in life in general. They realized that there were many parallel themes between Angela’s story-based commission process and Kïrsten’s approach to storytelling as a form of personal growth and development. Feeling that their skill sets compliment each other, and that it would be fun to collaborate, they launched The Art of Being in January 2019.
Their hope is to create a space and community where people can come as they are, open themselves up to a new way of BEing, and tap into their innate creativity.
Who We Are
NARRATIVE COACH
Kïrsten Blake
Kïrsten Blake is the creator and founder of Chapter BE, which works with individuals, groups, and organizations at the intersection of narrative coaching, mindfulness, and emotional intelligence. The tagline is First BE, then Do, with the premise that we need to first embody and ground ourselves in how we want to BE in order to take action from a value-centered place of intention. Narrative coaching is a mindful, experiential, and integrative approach, based in the natural human process of change, that helps people make real change in real time using their own stories. Learn more about Kïrsten & Chapter BE, here.
artist
Angela Craven
Angela Craven is an abstract expressionist painter and independent design researcher with a studio in Denver’s RiNo Art District. Combining art with her love of learning about people, she also creates custom abstract paintings that capture her subjects’ stories, and their unique challenges and triumphs. She has honed this process in her twelve years of UX and human-centered design, which puts people at the center of the design process. Learn more about Angela here.