Jewish Studio Project

JSP cultivates creativity as a Jewish practice for spiritual connection and social transformation.

Creativity is a transformative practice, a powerful new pathway for engaging Judaism, and an essential tool for bringing about a more just world. JSP’s methodology builds resilience and empathy, activates prophetic imagination, and inspires new approaches to society’s most pressing problems through the synergy of Jewish learning and creative practice. As JSP amplifies its Torah of Creativity, catalyzes a network of leaders and communities of practice, and develops new offerings grounded in research and careful evaluation, the Jewish Studio Process will become deeply embedded across the Jewish ecosystem. By making this work available to a broader and more diverse audience, JSP will help to seed a future in which every person is connected to their creativity as a force for healing, liberation and transformation.

Goal One: Focus on JSP’s core methodology—the Jewish Studio Process—offered through experiential programs, providing opportunities for broad engagement and integration of JSP values and teachings.

Goal Two: Weave a national network of JSP-trained facilitators, community leaders, and communities of practice, addressing local needs and infusing creative Jewish practices into their organizations.

Goal Three: Expand the reach of the Torah of Creativity: bold thought leadership rooted in Jewish wisdom, lifting up creativity as an essential human capacity for spiritual connection and social transformation.

In 2022, Jewish Studio Project doubled its staff and programs, building capacity to scale from a mostly local (Bay Area) organization to a national-scale organization that’s weaving and supporting a network of trained facilitators in our methodology, along with Jewish clergy and educators immersed in our creative practices and values. As a result of this rapid growth, JSP convened two in-person staff retreats, one in March 2022 and one in November 2022. These focused on team building and collaborative problem solving using our methodology. Investing in the systems for collaboration year-round also was a major focus, from upgrading our CRM infrastructure and procedures, to engaging a major digital strategy consultation. All of this builds on JSP’s 2022-2024 strategic plan, which was a major leadership investment, aligning staff, board, and constituents with common vision, goals, and process for achieving them.

The major changes for Jewish Studio Project in 2022 had to do with coming out of the pandemic as a transformed organization. JSP used the crisis of the pandemic as an opportunity to develop a new strategic plan that shifts the organization from a Bay Area-based spiritual community doing professional development workshops to a national organization catalyzing, weaving, and supporting a network of JSP-trained facilitators, Jewish clergy, and educators who start projects in their home communities addressing unmet needs using JSP’s unique methodology of Jewish creative process. JSP identified The Jewish Studio Process as the vehicle for impact, and designed a strategy for how it can reach the widest possible audience and serve the greatest needs. The Process, which combines accessible text study with art therapy best practices, is simple, replicable, and remarkably adaptable. No other organization in the Jewish community is focused on cultivating creativity as a tool for individuals, professionals, and organizations to thrive, while opening new pathways to Jewish engagement. By developing and supporting a network of leaders who are seeding creative communities of practice across the country, JSP is able to exponentially expand our reach and impact. JSP Facilitators are early childhood educators, chaplains, professors, painters, web developers, Jewish nonprofit executives, rabbis, art curators, Jewish farmers, ritualists, antiracism educators, and more. Located in over 16 cities around the country, in Canada and in Israel, JSP-trained leaders are addressing needs such as nourishing justice leaders, supporting new parents and combating professional burnout. We can see the ways that creativity is becoming recognized as powerful, necessary and vital in these ever-changing and uncertain times, and we are thrilled to be building and weaving this movement.