Meet Samantha Bolton | Creative Director, Spoken Word Poet, Visual Artist, & Social Justice Organization and Non-Profit Founder

We had the good fortune of connecting with Samantha Bolton and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Samantha, what’s your definition for success?
I like to think of life’s different paths as different types of ladders with a different tree at the top. In my mind, the first type of ladders are completely finished all the way up. This is the corporate ladder and at the top is a money tree. There are also half completed ladders, where after the first several rungs, you have to form your own. This is the academia ladder, and at the top is a diploma and whatever tree you grow from it. And finally there are majority or completely unfinished ladders, where you create your life’s path rung by rung. This is the artist’s/entrepreneur’s ladder and at the top is any tree you want, if you want it enough. (Of course those are not the only paths, just a condensed representation.)

Success is making it to the top of your chosen wall, sitting under the shade of the tree you planted and thinking: I like it here, I’m glad I chose the ladder I did. Success is being happy with the life you lived, no matter how many times you fell to get there.

Failure is not falling off the ladder, but rather spending your life climbing the wrong one.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
When I was 17, I got into MIT for Aerospace engineering. When I was 18, I founded a now multi-award winning social justice organization at Georgia Tech. At 19, I have had multiple paid creative directing jobs, including social media marketing, illustration, poetry, and the complete production of a music video, all while serving as a community programs coordinator intern for the Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs. By the age of 20, I will have founded a non-profit dedicated to promoting art programming in developing communities and will have completed a documentary for a non-profit based in Budapest. My journey has been one of intentional, sometimes quite difficult choices, but also one of privilege and support and for that I am so grateful.

I am starting a non-profit called the Little Guy Foundation based on this principle: shared humanity is the foundation of all art and art is the foundation of all change. I am starting this because art spaces taught me to see beauty in everything, everyone, and gave me a voice that can speak change into existence. I want to give that love and that power to people and communities that need it. I have found money in art, I have found, activism in art, I have found people in art. I want the world to find art the way I did, and to learn to use expression intentionally; turn videos to documentaries, turn words into poetry, turn paintings into profit. I want the world of passion to turn into a world of art, and I want a world of art to turn into a world of compassion. I will be trying to spread this message of a shared fundamental humanity, the “little guy” narrative, through illustrations, animations, and documentations of my travels on my social media this summer and in the future.

If you take one thing away from me and my journey in leadership, let it be the power of passion and compassion. A fire in your soul and a genuine warmth brings people together around you and makes even strangers want to fan the flames. That is how you turn a spark into a wildfire. I also want to say my success came from understanding when to quit and when to care, and I care a lot. The world is beautiful but broken, and humanity is broken but beautiful, and that is something to care about. If we want good change to happen, we must ‘look for out for the little guy’ – this means to feel deeply for the beautiful humanity in every corner of the world, to appreciate the beautiful life that grows from the cracks of what is broken.

Travel, create, and look out for the little guy. This is the simple gospel that I live by and that I hope to share; this is how I plan to change the world.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Monday: Poetry on Peters!
Throughout the week: Paint in Peidmont park, eat at Botiwalla in Ponce City Market, go shopping in Little 5 Points, and take pictures at the Krog Street Market tunnel
Thursday night: The open mic at Urban Grind
Friday night: Go to the Space Open Mic in Kennesaw, unless its the first Friday of the month where I would go to the Underground for First Friday.
Saturday: Go to the High Museum, eat at Ponce AGAIN and then walk the beltline at sunset
Sunday: Reset, enjoy the Georgia Tech campus, and walk around the Midtown or Downtown area.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I would like to shoutout my friends, family, GT faculty, and more than anything, the kindness of strangers.

As a girl from the Charlotte suburbs, the ATL art community opened its arms to me and made me realize there really is no such thing as impossible with a little passion and support. Throughout the trail I am navigating, this amazing support system of family, chosen family, and kind strangers has created bridges over doubt and uncertainty that I could never have crossed alone. In fact, I wouldn’t be an artist or an activist leader at all without strangers, creatives, and mentors taking me in from the cold rain of the wrong path and saying, “I see you, and I believe in you.”

Thank you for supporting me and giving me the encouragement I needed to paint outside the lines of the already beautiful life I was handed. I’m sure when it’s finished, the portrait of my life will look an awful lot like you; the people who supported and inspired it.

Website: samandlittleguy.com COMING SOON!

Instagram: @sam_ebolton @sam.cinematic @littleguyofficial

Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/samantha-bolton-4629ba269

Image Credits
Joshua Weems