we create ourselves. we create our belonging. we create our freedom.
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Purpose Pathways Program: Cultureworker Development
The Purpose Pathways Program is URE’s cultureworker development and commission program, creating pathways for Black Trans and Gender Nonconforming (BTGNC) artists, organizers, and creative practitioners to access paid project-based work while developing the skills, relationships, and experience needed to build toward sustainable careers.
We believe people should run systems; systems should not run people. Too often, creative workers are expected to adapt themselves to rigid systems, perform unpaid labor to gain experience, or choose between meaningful work and economic sustainability. Collective Wisdom creates another pathway by recognizing the expertise people already carry through creative practice, organizing, lived experience, community relationships, and everyday problem-solving.
Creating Pathways for BTGNC Cultureworkers to Build Purpose-Driven Work
How It Works
URE connects BTGNC cultureworkers with paid commissions that align with their skills, interests, experience, and aspirations. Current commission opportunities include:
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Creative & Cultural: Events, workshops, lectures, theatre productions, project development.
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Organizational Strategy: Strategic plans and program design
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Communications: Organizational strategic communications plans
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Digital: Website strategy, design, and development
We look beyond traditional job titles to identify transferable skills. A poet may bring storytelling and communications expertise; an organizer may bring project management and partnership skills; a performer may be an experienced facilitator; a community caretaker may bring relationship-building and conflict navigation skills.
We are also open to training. When appropriate, commissions can include mentorship, collaboration, shadowing, or opportunities to develop new skills alongside more experienced practitioners.
From Gig Work to Purpose-Driven Work
Purpose Pathways is designed to create a bridge between project-based work and longer-term professional sustainability. Each commission can become an opportunity to earn, learn, build a portfolio, expand relationships, develop transferable skills, and move toward the kind of work a cultureworker wants to create.
The program is rooted in URE’s E.N.O.U.G.H. Method:
Expertise — recognizing the knowledge we already carry.
Novice — remaining open to learning.
Origination — creating new ways of doing and being.
Understanding — paying attention to how systems and environments work.
Guidance — learning through reciprocal relationships.
Health — building sustainable ways of working.
We believe purpose-driven work begins with recognizing that we are already enough.
Purpose Pathways helps culture workers identify, hone, and wield what they already know while creating pathways to learn what comes next.
