Art and accessibility have always been significant topics for me. I was born with multiple disabilities and conditions, including POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome) and autism, and I grew up with a sister who has autism. In the 6th grade, I decided to create an Instagram account called “Artistic.Edie” to showcase my art. I was inspired to do this after seeing my best friend have an art account. I noticed that there was a lack of support for artists on Instagram. Many people would ask if they could pay for exposure or receive free art.

My first memories of art are from Ms. Maria’s drama class. She helped me find my  voice in the arts by letting us put on our own plays.

It wasn’t until the pandemic that I really understood that I had disabilities. In second grade, I was playing at our second-grade meetup on a playground stool by myself, and my second-grade teacher, Ms. Hayes, brought this girl up to the playground structure I was playing on and said, “Hey, you should meet Jules.” Later on, she introduced me to her twin, Carly, who is also disabled. That was the first disabled friend I had, it made me no longer feel lonely.

In 2019, I started to realize that I could build a safe space for artists so I started a Facebook group called “We Have Talents.” It was a space where people could post their art and get feedback or tips. Later on in the process of the group I decided that I wanted a better name for it, so after a few changes,I renamed it to We Are Artistic, and that name stuck with me.

Then, I started a website for the organization and an Instagram account. At that time it was just me and a couple family members and friends. On the Instagram account I was posting tips and other resources for artists. Later on, a couple artists on Instagram reached out to ask if they could help. I started a Google classroom for me to give them tasks and assignments. I didn’t really know how to recruit leaders and volunteers, so I just kept posting on Instagram and getting my new team to help with Instagram posts. Then I had some youth apply to be leads, and we eventually moved over to Discord.

The summer of my freshman year, I was browsing Instagram and I saw this activity where you can make cards for kids in hospitals and earn community service hours. I reached out to my cousin and asked if she wanted to host a card-making event with me because I thought it would be a great way to get hours. We did it on my porch landing. That was the very first in-person event we did. It was raining, and it didn’t go so well, and we almost gave up, but I’m glad we didn’t. Later on we ended up hosting more and more events.

My sophomore year, I decided to start recruiting school friends because I knew they needed community service hours. Many people from my school started volunteering, and now some of them are/were directors and are still involved today and are graduating high school and have spent all four years of their high school in the nonprofit.

We lost our Instagram account. I couldn’t log in. I decided to email WSA9 to ask if they could do a story about how we lost our Instagram account. I told my mom I was going to do that. Later on we got our Instagram account back. I tell them we got back into our account, and they still want to do a story. I had never been on the news before. It ended up going very well and many people from my school ended up seeing it, and we also ended up getting new opportunities.

Now, we have a nonprofit. We are fiscally sponsored by Hack Club, and we have 200 volunteers across the globe. We have been featured on many news stations. We now have two internships: 24 Frames for Change, which teaches people how to create change using film; they create a film about a topic affecting their community alone or in groups after learning about film techniques, and then they present it to 3 community leaders; and a communication and creative media internship that we’re starting, which allows people to learn different community and creative media aspects like outreach.

We’ve hosted over 10 cardmaking events leading to over a thousand cards being created and making partnerships with places such as the Station at Riverdale Park. We have also been able to host Spread the Word to End the Word events where we work to end the use of derogatory words. We have partnered with the Best Buddies Friendship Walk in DC, which also allowed us to host a table there. Last year we raised $7,785 for the DC & VA walk. Best Buddies is super important to me because my sister has an Intellectual and Developmental Disability. It means a lot that my organization got to develop this partnership. 

We get to create a space for all abilities in the art. I’ve seen people like my sister be treated differently just because of how they look or get stared at. If we can create space for them that’s amazing because everybody deserves a space where they can just exist.