STL’s Hope Creates makes art accessible to teens in sobriety, looks to KC expansion

Hope Creates is a St. Louis-based non-profit dedicated to encouraging artistic expression in young people recovering from alcoholism and substance abuse. Hope Creates offers monthly community creation events, art exhibitions, and a program called “Make Your M.A.R.C.”

The founder of Hope Creates is Katherine Thomas-Dietz, who was inspired by her daughter’s experience with substance abuse disorder. Thomas-Dietz leaned on her passion for creating art to channel the ups and downs of watching a loved one suffer. 

“The visuals that I was creating helped communicate the pain, trauma, and, eventually the joy,” says Thomas-Dietz. “It was really cathartic for me.”

Starting a non-profit was not something Thomas-Dietz was originally interested in, as her background was in design and business consulting for Fortune 500 companies. Once she committed to the idea, Thomas-Dietz entered a social enterprise innovation contest at Washington University. She won three rounds of the competition, which supplied seed money to get Hope Creates off the ground. 

“The idea kept haunting me,” says Thomas-Dietz. “Seeing people making sobriety more fun than addiction while engaging the community made me realize we could do this through the arts.”

The Make Your M.A.R.C. (Music, Arts, Recovery, and Connection) program spans over nine sessions, where a group of about a dozen teenagers meet for a few hours to create art. The participants are introduced to new mediums, such as drum circles or legal graffiti. They also learn to use their creativity as a coping skill in their recovery. Make Your M.A.R.C was created specifically for teens dealing with juvenile courts and detention centers, who often are not offered the same recovery resources as other young adults. 

Hope Creates’ monthly community events also involve learning new artistic mediums while spending time with other young people in recovery. Families are also welcome to attend, which is a great opportunity to be involved in and support a loved one’s sobriety. 

In appreciating all the ways Hope Creates spreads joy to the community, it is easy to forget that the underlying problem they aim to solve is widespread and deadly. The number of drug and alcohol-related deaths in the US continues to climb–resulting in over 200,000 deaths a year as per the most recent studies at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Many of these deaths involve teens and young adults who have yet even to reach the legal drinking age. 

“We’re going to be flirting with a quarter million people dying every year here. If a foreign country came in and killed a quarter million people, we would be at war,” says Thomas-Dietz.

“In that case we would be coming up with innovative solutions, but right now we’re not. It’s a complicated problem that touches many sectors, and makes a lot of money for a lot of people.”

“The human condition leads us to painful moments,” continues Thomas-Dietz. “We need to find practices, principles, and coping mechanisms that help us stay strong. We can experience pain and trauma, but resiliently move forward while believing in ourselves–that’s what we want to teach.”

Hope Creates has hosted events in KC to expand their outreach in past years. Unfortunately, this expansion was during the pandemic years, so it didn’t catch the traction it needed to continue in KC. Hopefully, enough interest will be shown to bring Hope Creates back to our community.

Visit Hope Creates’ website to learn more about Hope Create’s programs, donate, or express interest in helping bring the org back to KC.