Why we’re choosing imagination over resolutions this #NationalVisionBoardDay
January usually invites resolutions. Be better. Do more. Fix yourself. Which usually suggests that we’re not enough already.
Instead, this new year, we’re inviting our creative circle to “vision board” for their new creative year ahead.
On National Vision Board Day, people around the country are cutting images, writing words, and dreaming forward … all through a lens of curiosity, imagination, possibility.
Vision boarding isn’t about demanding perfection from your future self; it’s about listening. What’s great now that you want to carry forward? What do you want more of? What do you want to protect? What will success feel like to you?
As a San Antonio theatre company entering a new chapter, we found ourselves drawn to that approach.
When we vision-boarded for Surround Project’s future, a few themes surfaced again and again. Not goals. Not metrics. Values.
We landed on four guiding principles that now anchor everything we do:
- Compassion – for others’ stories, ourselves, our collaborators, and our audiences
- Resilience – making art that endures and adapts, investing in our health, responding to the moment
- Relationships – because theatre is built by people, not systems…it’s a team sport
- Risk – creative, necessary, courageous
Those values are shaping how we make work – and how we want to meet artists.
That’s why, tomorrow, we’re celebrating National Vision Board Day as part of our (non)audition session. Instead of a formal two-minute audition, we’re inviting artists to gather, get to know us, get in a creative flow, and show up fully as the people they already are.
This approach isn’t happening in a vacuum. There’s a growing movement across the country toward non-traditional auditions and casting processes.
Theatre companies are hosting karaoke parties to cast musicals. Others are collaborating on junk journaling to explore mystery plays or building playlists instead of reading sides.
These practices ask a different question than “Can you perform right now?”
They ask: Who are you? How do you think? How do you collaborate?
We believe that getting to know the whole person leads to braver rooms, stronger ensembles, and more meaningful art – especially in a city as rich and diverse as San Antonio.
Vision boarding together creates space for imagination without judgment. It lowers the stakes. It opens doors. It allows artists to be seen not as commodities but as collaborators.
This National Vision Board Day, we’re choosing curiosity over pressure, values over resolutions, and community over competition.
And we can’t wait to see what we build next – together. 🎨✨
Make Your Own Creative New Year ZINE!
If you’d like to play along, here are the instructions for a Creative New Year ZINE. You can download the Zine prompts, and you can download the one-page folding instructions to create your own 8-page mini-zine!