Mandy Lehman

What the CreativeMornings/Cincy team is listening to:

Longform - Interviews with exceptional longform writers. Max Linsky, can we be best friends?

Heaven’s Gate - Yes, that Heaven’s Gate. Not for the faint of heart, but for those who are fascinated with cults and psychology. 

Hidden Brain - Psychology for the real world.

Code Switch - About race, culture and identity in America.

What the CreativeMornings/Cincy team is reading this week:

The Leavers by Lisa Ko. Beautifully written, dynamic and realistic characters, highly relevant storyline. 

How Spotify bots are learning what music to recommend by tracking what we listen to, how long and what songs we skip. How’s that for context to your musical preferences?

Farnam Street Blog which helps people master what others have already figured out about life. Topics include emotional intelligence, health and scheduling your time. 

Cool Hunting is nice for all your trend-hunting moments, when you want to understand where things are going and how your ideas stack up against trends.  

We’d call this site a brain tickler. Find wonderful and random things, including food, events, art and architecture, on Atlas Obscura. 

Context is an underused word for an abstract concept, and it’s the theme of our December breakfast lecture. 

Context is personal. Who are you without the context of your familiar, your job, your background or your friends? You are an individual, but without the context of others you may not feel so well-defined. 

And when you travel to another country or enter the context of another culture, do you feel your individuality or differences all the more acutely? Or do you feel more of a sameness and similarity?

Context can be big and small. Its your personal frame of reference and the bigger picture. It’s what we hold others against and how we perceive ourselves. Without context there’s a lack of understanding. With context, there’s connection.

Everyone is welcome to join us at PictureMusic on Friday, December 15 to hear music producer Kick Lee talk about his life in context. It’s free to enjoy coffee, breakfast and a talk. Join us! https://creativemornings.com/talks/kick-lee

The scary thing about taking a risk is that you don’t know what the outcome might be, but that’s also what makes it so exciting. If you really think about it, life in itself is a risk. We get up everyday with our days planned out, but ultimately we don’t know what could happen. 

In any industry, at some point you will have to take a risk or two, maybe it’s a big move or a new job. The inception of CreativeMornings was quite a risk! Hosting a monthly talk including breakfast that was free of charge, who thought that would have lasted more than a few months? 

It requires volunteers, locations, speakers, food, coffee, the list goes on, but what a great risk it turned out to be! The founder, Tina Roth Eisenberg took a risk by starting CreativeMornings which is still growing rapidly 8 years later. 

So remember that the next time you are considering taking a risk. It might crash and burn, or it could be something greater than you ever thought possible. You never know until you try!

Come join us on March 31! We’ll be hosting Yelitsa Jean-Charles -- RISD grad and founder of Healthy Roots, Natural Dolls for Natural Girls -- who will share her ideas on facing and embracing the TABOO.

Many people fear change, while some welcome it with open arms. The fact is, change is an inevitable part of life. We are constantly changing, everyday. We change jobs, our hair color, our coffee order, and the list goes on.

In just 8 years, we’ve seen our global CreativeMornings community grow from a single chapter in 2008, to 137 chapters around the world, today! If the pioneers who started these monthly lectures had been scared of changing and growing, we wouldn’t be the creative force that we are today! So next time you are scared to make a change, think of where it might lead you. Try to embrace change, not fear it. 

Here at CreativeMornings Cincinnati, we have been going through some changes of our own this year. We kicked off Breakfast Clubs for unique groups of creatives in our community, we’re planning some educational Field Trips, growing our team, and adding some special touches to our monthly events!

Join us this month as we host D. Lynn Meyers, the Producing Artistic Director of the Ensemble Theatre on March 25th to discuss how essential change is. See you there!

Ethics is a complex code of morals that surrounds us wherever we go. Right versus wrong, good versus evil, we are constantly pondering these questions!

This month, 133 chapters delve into this complicated them… but instead of reinventing the wheel and writing yet another blog post on Ethics, we’ve decided to take another approach! 

We’re going to share with you a few of our favorite quotes from some of our CreativeMornings/CIN lectures! We hope these quotes will inspire you and help alleviate the winter blues!

“If you have really good ideas right now, you can make them happen in Cincinnati.” - Bob Bonder

“Design is a process to solve challenges.” - Chris Glass

“If something is in your story, it’s there for a reason.”- Mike Fleisch

“Time is the moment when you and what is collide.” - Troy Bronsink

“What’s right for you isn’t right to everyone, and that’s OK.” - Jesse Fox

Join #cmcin on February 26, for hot coffee and yummy breakfast as we host Chris Sutton of Noble Denim and Victor Athletics.  

Language is a very complex system with some simple definitions. Merriam-Webster defines language as:

-The system of words or signs that people use to express thoughts and feelings to each other

-Any one of the systems of human language that are used and understood by a particular group of people

No matter which definition you use, language is a very powerful thing. Whether it is spoken, written, read, or signed, we use it everyday to communicate and express ourselves. If it weren’t for language, it would be near impossible to communicate with each other.

At CreativeMornings/Cincinnati, we are just 1 of the 130 chapters across the globe. The chapters span 55 counties from Edmonton, Canada all the way to Auckland, New Zealand, with over 40 languages spoken! Yet we all gather once a month in our cities, for coffee and a breakfast lecture. Technology and Google Translate make it possible for us all to communicate with each other; no matter what language we speak, and that is a very powerful thing!

Join #CMCin for our next lecture on January 29, as we enjoy some coffee and pastries and delve more into the phenomenon of language.

130 chapters in 55 countries who like their mornings creative! 

Join us this Friday at Rhinegeist Brewery to hear Bob Bonder and Molly Wellmann tell us who they are, what inspires them and how heritage plays a major role in each of their businesses!

Find out more about our speakers and register for the event.

Like a proud parent, we were incredibly excited to see that Josh Gott is the CreativeMornings featured talk over on Shutterstock’s blog!