Founded in 1974, Creative Growth is an Oakland-based non-profit organization that advances the inclusion of artists with developmental disabilities in contemporary art by providing a professional studio environment and gallery representation. Creative Growth’s poetry program began in 2019 when Poet-in-Residence Lorraine Lupo (with the help of Studio Special Projects Coordinator Kathleen Henderson) began hosting unique collaborative writing workshops for artists facilitated by Lupo, Kostas Anagnopoulos, and various guest poets. Since then, their poetry collaborations have been published in The Poem Is Telling Me I Remember (Slacks Books) and have appeared in Blazing Stadium, The Racket, and Small Press Traffic.

Pictured: Creative Growth artist Elizabeth Rangel and poet Lorraine Lupo smile as they sit and chat in a garden filled with plants and ceramics outside of a red brick studio building.