Turn the feeling into sound.
Guitars. Rhythm. Songwriting. Listening. Experimenting. Making noise. Learning that you don't need to be a professional musician to use sound as a way to express something real.
A Shirley's Fund Company project
Create Hope
Give the poison somewhere to go.
There have been times in my life when creating was more than something I enjoyed doing.
It gave fear somewhere to go. Grief somewhere to go. Anger somewhere to go. Depression somewhere to go. Questions I couldn't answer somewhere to go.
Creating has helped save my life more than once.
Create Hope is my attempt to build that possibility for other people: free creative experiences where music, photography, art, writing and creative classes can become tools for expression, connection and mental well-being.
Shirley's Fund Company ·
501(c)(3) nonprofit ·
EIN 99-3010688 ·
Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
Annual Goal
$30,000
Program
One Full Year
Michigan
Ann Arbor
Colombia
Medellín
The idea is simple
Give people somewhere creative to put what they're carrying.
Sometimes people don't have the right words. Sometimes they don't want to talk. Sometimes what they're feeling is too complicated to explain directly.
A camera can become a way to look at the world differently. A guitar can turn anger into sound. A notebook can hold the thing nobody knows how to say out loud. A creative class can remind somebody that they are still capable of making something new.
Create Hope is about making those doors easier to find.
It is not therapy, and it does not replace professional mental health care, medical care or crisis support. It is a creative community program designed to give people more ways to express themselves, connect and support their own well-being.
What Create Hope looks like
Make something from it.
The point is not to teach everybody to become a professional artist.
The point is to help people experience what it feels like
to take something happening inside them
and give it a form outside themselves.
Learn to notice again.
Cameras can change the way we pay attention. Photography classes and creative photo experiences can help people slow down, notice their environment, tell stories and create images from what they see and feel.
Try another way through.
Writing. Drawing. Film. Storytelling. Visual art. Creative experiments. Different people need different doors. The goal is to keep offering doors.
Don't carry everything alone.
Create Hope brings people into the same room to make things, learn, connect, share if they choose and remember that difficult seasons do not have to be experienced entirely in isolation.
Two cities
One year of creating hope.
Ann Arbor and Medellín are both part of my own story.
I want Create Hope to live in both places
and let each community shape what the program becomes there.
Ann Arbor.
Creative gatherings and classes centered around music, photography, storytelling, making things and giving people accessible ways to explore creativity as part of caring for themselves.
Medellín.
Creative experiences built with local artists, collaborators and community partners, with programming shaped for the people actually living there rather than simply copying an American event into another country.
My why
Creating has saved me more than once.
Create Hope isn't an idea I arrived at because somebody told me the world needed another program.
It comes from something I have learned across my own life: when things get dark, confusing, painful or overwhelming, I still have a choice about what I do with what is happening to me.
I cannot control every loss. Every relationship. Every financial setback. Every failure. Every season of depression. Every version of the future that disappears.
But I can choose whether those things are the end of my story.
Photography has helped me make that choice.
Music has helped me make that choice.
Writing has helped me make that choice.
Building things, teaching, making films, drawing, experimenting and putting my hands on an idea have helped me make that choice.
I don't control every card I am dealt. I still get to decide what I make from them.
That is one of the biggest lessons creativity has given me.
There have been periods when I could have spent all of my energy staring at what had been taken away, what had failed, who had disappointed me or why life hadn't gone according to plan.
Sometimes I did.
But eventually I had to ask a better question:
Okay. This happened. What am I going to do with it now?
That question gives me my life back.
Creativity does not erase grief. It does not magically cure depression. It does not repair every relationship, solve every problem or replace professional mental health care.
But it gives me agency.
It gives me somewhere to put the poison besides endlessly circulating it inside myself.
Sometimes the result is a photograph. Sometimes a song. Sometimes a page full of words. Sometimes something nobody else will ever see.
The important part is that I am no longer only reacting to what happened.
I am creating a response.
I am participating in my own life again.
And I keep coming back to one question:
What happens if more people discover that they can do that too?
Not everybody needs a guitar. Not everybody needs a camera. Not everybody wants to paint.
But almost everybody has something they are carrying.
Create Hope is about helping people find a creative language that gives some of it somewhere to go — and reminds them that they still have some say in what comes next.
That is why I want to build this.
What $30,000 means
$30K
One year of Create Hope.
Establish the program
$30,000 gives Create Hope a year to become something real.
The goal is not to raise money for one afternoon and then disappear.
$30,000 establishes a full year of Create Hope programming across Ann Arbor and Medellín.
That gives us time to build relationships, bring people together, offer creative experiences, learn what people respond to, work with artists and community collaborators and let the program grow from actual participation.
I want to give the idea enough room to become useful, prove what works and build something that can continue.
The campaign goal is intentionally simple:
establish and operate Create Hope for one year
in Ann Arbor and Medellín.
Help build it
Help give somebody another way through.
You may never know the person who picks up a camera, touches a guitar, writes something down or walks into a creative class because you helped make the room possible.
That's okay. The point is that the room exists when they need it.
$5,000
Make a major investment in establishing the first full year of Create Hope.
$2,500
Help turn the idea into ongoing creative programming.
$1,000
Help make a meaningful part of the first year possible.
$500
Help open the door to free creative experiences.
$250
Help Create Hope reach people and build community.
$100
Help make creative participation accessible.
$50
Help somebody find another way to express what they're carrying.
$25
Help make something possible.
Any Amount
Give what you can.
Every contribution moves the first year closer to becoming real.
Donations are processed through Shirley's Fund Company,
a Michigan-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. EIN: 99-3010688. Donation receipts are issued by email.
Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. EIN: 99-3010688. Donation receipts are issued by email.
Take ownership of what comes next. Then help somebody else do the same.
We don't control everything life puts in front of us.
But sometimes we can pick up a camera.
Touch a guitar.
Write the page.
Make something.
We can turn reaction into response.
And sometimes that is how we begin finding ourselves again.
Create Hope ·
Shirley's Fund Company ·
Current Version: September 2026 ·
Ann Arbor + Medellín ·
Building One Year At A Time