Meryl Streep gave a moving speech Sunday as she accepted the lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes. Many things were wonderful about her speech. Including her focus on diversity and her stern reprimand of Trump's bullying behavior. But my favorite bit was at the very end. She recognized her fellow actors for modeling empathy in their work. Then she said,
"As my friend, the dear departed Princess Leia, said to me once, take your broken heart, make it into art." - Meryl Streep
Tonight we're kicking off our next chapter of the Un.Incubator with 4 cohorts made up of 21 inspirational entrepreneurs. To us, social impact is not just traditional nonprofit work or even just giving to those in need. It is those things. It is also inspirational work, work that moves and motivates people, and who better to do that work than artists of all kinds? We have creative impact entrepreneurs of all sorts in our cohorts this winter: filmmakers, designers, photographers, musicians, art curators, performance artists and more.
If you haven't watched Meryl's speech, take a minute and do it. Just another example of how powerful artists can be to move people and change the world.
I'll leave you with a quote from Mary Oliver which I discovered recently in a book given to me by a new friend, Blessed Are the Wierd.
Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all. But fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.
- Mary Oliver
Here's to 2017, to all the misfits, rebels and lonely dreamers. May you take your brokenness, your indignation, your pain - and may you create that which heals, inspires, moves, and changes our world!