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Hawa Hassan was only 4-years-old when fighting forced her and her family from their home in Somalia. Hassan spent the next three years in Kenya, where some of her earliest memories were of running around tents in a refugee camp with her siblings and helping her mother stock the goods store shed opened there. When she was seven, Hassans mother sent her to live with family friends in Seattle. It would be another 15 years before she saw her family again. A lot of my childhood was spent wondering about my own background and my own identity, said Hawa, a chef and entrepreneur who now lives in New York. For many years, I had this deep desire to find people like myself and tell that story. [Photo: courtesy Ten Speed Press] Hassans new cookbook, Setting a Place for Us: Recipes and Stories of Displacement, Resilience, and Communities from Eight Countries Impacted by War is the fruit of that longing. To write it, Hassan spent three years travelling and interviewing dozens of chefs and entrepreneurs from Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, El Salvador, Iraq, Lebanon, Liberia, and Yemencountries perhaps better known to outsiders for civil strife than rich ingredients and complex flavors. The chapters are divided by country, each one offering a brief history; lush photos of daily life; several recipes; and at least one interview with a local grower, restaurateur, or community organizer. My number-one goal is to tell a different story about what it means to be from these places, Hassan said. I hope that when people pick up this book, they come for the recipes, but they stay for the stories. In the DRC she spoke with a baker who found success delivering mikateor doughnutsto customers during the pandemic. A brewer from Baghdad reflects on building a new life in New York and highlights masgoufa grilled fish with tamarind sauceas a must-try Iraqi dish. Though many of the people she spoke with have been displaced, Hassan said she intentionally focussed on food traditions and everyday life rather than conflict. This was much more about the idea of home rather than what the temperature of a country is, or what your politics are, she said. Mikey Muhanna, a social entrepreneur featured in Hassans Lebanon chapter, said that perspective came as a relief. I was apprehensive at the beginning, he said. There’s a million orientalizing books, like, let’s go to war-torn countries and talk about real people on the ground, but the more I got to speak to her, and her collaborator [photographer Riley Dengler], I realized that they were coming from a place of real curiosity. He said Hassans work offers a blueprint for how to report on communities other than ones own. Its really powerful to see somebody who has the life perspective that Hawa has tell these stories with integrity, patience, and curiosity, he said. Hassan traces the roots of Setting a Place for Us more a decade back to a six-month stay in Norway, where her mother and siblings eventually settled. After so many years apart, Hassan said she had to learn to find her place again in her family. That’s when I started thinking about how I know it’s not only my family that has these big stories to tell about being othered or impacted by war or by family separation, she said. Hassan was working as a model in New York at the time, but in Norway she spent hours in the kitchen with her mother making Somali food. When she returned to the U.S. in 2015 she started to lay the groundwork for her company, Basbaas, a condiment company with offerings like tamarind date sauce and coconut cilantro chutney. In 2020, she published her debut cookbook, In Bibi’s Kitchen, which she cowrote with Julia Turshen. A collection of recipes from grandmothers in eight eastern African countries, it won the James Beard Foundation award for Best International Cookbook. The sauce [company] has helped me to inch my way onto the American dining table, and tell a story of not just being a Somalian girl, but being an African girl, she said. She saw In Bibis Kitchen as an expansion of that storyoffering a glimpse of womens daily lives in East Africa. Following the success of In Bibis Kitchen, she was approached by Food Network TV to host her own show. She starred in Hawa at Home, where she cooked dishes like Doro Wat and made piri piri sauce, bringing East African food to new audiences. Her new book is a more intimate exploration of her life storyone that relates to millions of displaced people around the world. Setting a Place for Us is the next layer of who I am that I’m willing to share, which is a person who’s been impacted by civil unrest, displacement, and family separation, Hassan said. But despite the heavy subject matter, the book is largely optimistica celebration of the places people have returned to after years away or that that they continue to long for from afar. My philosophy is we have no sad stories to tell, Hassan said. Setting a Place for Us: Recipes and Stories of Displacement, Resilience, and Communities from Eight Countries Impacted by War will be published on Tuesday, May 13, by Ten Speed Press.
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Burnout is a pervasive issue that can be damaging to individuals and costly to organizations. As Fast Company has reported previously, 82% of workers feel at risk for burnout and could be costing companies an average of $21,000 per year in lost productivity. And while theres no shortage of advice about how to prevent burnout, prevention isnt always a level playing field. Here are some situations that may leave you more prone to burnout than others: 1. If youre in the wrong work environment Kandi Wiens, senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the universitys masters in medical education program, says that some people may be more at risk for burnout than othersespecially those who are working in environments that arent compatible with their personality or temperament. Wiens, author of Burnout Immunity: How Emotional Intelligence Can Help You Build Resilience and Heal Relationships at Work, says that burnout, especially in the workplace, ultimately comes down to a misalignment, or sometimes referred to as a mismatch, between someone’s personality or temperament and the environment that they are in. So if you are an extrovert and were working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, that might have led to burnout, while your more introverted colleagues may have thrived. If youre curious and open-minded and your workplace shuts down that kind of inquiry or experimentation, you may burn out faster. Clues that you might be in the wrong work environment include feeling resistance to the companys work style or ideas. Wiens suggests people pay attention to that resistance and check themselves. Practice vocalizing your concerns about that resistance with someone you really trust. What would that look like, and how can you do that in a way that is healthy for you? she says. 2. If youre prone to fawning Those who are constantly overextending themselves in an effort to please others in the workplace and are unable to set healthy boundaries are fawners, says clinical psychologist Ingrid Clayton, author of Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselvesand How to Find Our Way Back. This chronic people-pleasing is a hybrid response to trauma, Clayton says, noting that its an alternative to traditional fight, flight, or freeze responses. Its this hyper-attunement and managing other peopleappeasing other people in a hyperarousal kind of way, she says. But its also hypoarousal, where there is a disconnect from ourselves, so we dont know were fawning. In her book, Clayton cites the example of a Harvard-educated law firm partner who was suffering signs of burnout. Through working with him, she helped him realize that the external validation he was seeking, as well as his inability to set boundaries, was leading to burnout. Such extreme people-pleasing can cause us to overwork and take on too much, ultimately leading to burnout. Our worth is tied to these external markers rather than a connection with ourselves, Clayton explains. So, burnout is not just about outputthe exhaustion of overdoingbut our loss of autonomy, authenticity, and knowing who we are at all. This is survival mode, and we are not meant to live there 24/7. Something has to give. 3. If you lack self-awareness and self-advocacy skills When youre encountering challenges in the workplace, whether theyre related to the culture being out of alignment with your personality and traits, or if youre slipping into people-pleasing behavior, advocating for yourself is an important part of burnout protection. However, Wiens says that self-awareness is essential to understanding the issues that are causing friction with your personality or temperament and then being able to address them. Once you identify the issue, you can begin to take steps to mitigate it. For example, if youre isolated and extroverted, you can purposefully design other ways to get the interaction you need. If your creativity is being stifled, you may be able to find other outlets for it. Wiens suggests thinking of it this way: What is it in the environment that is a mismatch or misalignment with that thing that is triggered in me, and then what can I do to either change it or change the way I think about [it]? She notes that people who lack self-awareness and the ability to examine their feelings face a fundamental hurdle in addressing the issues that could lead to burnout. Clayton notes that if youre unable to advocate for yourselfincluding asking for what you need and setting boundaries when necessaryyou may be more prone to burnout. Fighting burnout The good news, Clayton says, is that boundary-setting can be practiced and built like a muscle. Start by asking for what you need when the stakes are lowin a restaurant order, for exampleto get in the habit. Some people can kind of laugh this off if they don’t have this experience, but it’s very real that if you don’t have an experience of speaking up or setting a boundary where it felt safe and it was successful, you have to start to build that experience, she says. While several factors may contribute to burnout, these three issues may accelerate it. However, through awareness and practice in mitigating these factors, workers can find a measure of protection from a pervasive malady.
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Artists and cultural workers are falling through the cracks of our economy at a time when their work has never been more needed in society. Their ability to exist and thrive is threatened by the cost of living and housing affordability crisis, our increasingly precarious economy, and cuts to grant funding under the new administration. Many exist in a structural grey area between independent gig workers and small business owners. Their work is often episodic, making them easily left out of safety net programs like unemployment and healthcarethis is especially true for artists from historically marginalized communities. To address these challenges, we need new systems and solutions to increase economic equity and ensure that our communities have access to creativity and culture. One such area weve seen a wave of interest and experimentation around the potential of in recent years is guaranteed income. What is guaranteed income? It refers to unrestricted recurring cash payments that people can use however they see fit to cover their basic needs and reach their personal and professional goals. Guaranteed income programs can be focused geographically on specific cities, on specific communitiesfor example young people, entrepreneurs, or parentsor a mix of both. Springboard Executive Director Laura Zabel announces Guaranteed Income Pilot for Artists Expansion, 2025. [Photo: Thai Phan-Quang /courtesy Springboard for the Arts] At Springboard for the Arts, weve been delivering one of the longest running guaranteed income programs in the country since 2021, focusing on both urban and rural artists and creative workers in Minnesota. Our 100 recipients to date include painters, sculptors, hiphop artists, singers, composers, teaching artists, performers, and writers who are receiving $500 a month over a five-year period. This has given us the opportunity to reflect on what we’ve learned and what insights we can offer to others thinking about doing this work. Artwork by Alicia Thao, Artists Respond: People, Place, and Prosperity Cohort Member. [Image: courtesy Springboard for the Arts] Adapt each program to the historical, cultural, and economic extractions in that community At its best and most effective, guaranteed income is a tool for justice and repair by supporting populations who have been exploited by social, cultural, and economic systems in America. These programs should be tailored to a communitys needs by considering the connection points between the economics, culture, and physical design of our cities and the impact of policy and planning harms from the past. Both cities and rural places bear the generational impact of economies based on the extraction of natural or cultural resources including redlining, land theft, the interstate highway system, and placement of industrial infrastructure, like trash burners, that has caused generations of environmental harm and adverse health impacts. The results of these policy decisions fall disproportionately on American BIPOC communities and neighborhoods, particularly Native and Black communities. Artists Respond Cohort Member Briuana Williams live drawing at Basic Income Week 2025. [Photo: Thai Phan-Quang /courtesy Springboard for the Arts] For our work in Saint Paul, weve focused our efforts in Frogtown and Rondotwo neighborhoods that are culturally vibrant, resilient, and community oriented, yet that continue to be disproportionately impacted by historical disinvestment, discrimination, and extraction. Rondo, for example, is a historically Black neighborhood whose cultural and business corridor was destroyed in the 1950s and ’60s by highway construction, causing generational economic and cultural harm that residents deal with to this day. Our rural work is focused in Otter Tail County, in West Central Minnesota. This community, like many rural areas across the U.S., is in the midst of economic transformation, including the loss of major employers, lack of affordable housing, and increase in predatory businesses like dollar stores and payday lending. Here, guaranteed income can be a tool for attracting and retaining the creative people these communities will need to imagine a different future. The focus on artists and creative workers is rooted in the idea that, like caregiving and community work, cultural work is a form of labor that communities depend on to be healthy but is not adequately valued by our current economy. Artists Talk in rural Minnesota by Kandace Creel Falcón. [Photo: Brittanni Smith/courtesy Springboard for the Arts] Use artists to help change the narrative about guaranteed income programs While the idea of guaranteed income is gaining traction across the country, there are still embedded cultural and political beliefs that limit how far economic justice policy change can go. These are often harmful tropes like: Do people deserve it? How do they spend the money? Why dont they just get a job? One of the most effective ways of countering these questions is for people to experience the stories of these programs on a human level, which can transform pervasive narratives about inequality and poverty into belief systems of belonging, deservedness, and inherent selfworth. In this way, artistsparticularly those participating in guaranteed income programs and who are locally rooted in their communitieshave a unique role to play in guiding and delivering a narrative shift around guaranteed income. With this in mind, we created a project within our wider guaranteed income work, collaborating with a cohort of artists on Artists Respond: People, Place, and Prosperity. In this program, artists created public projects highlighting the root causes that lead to the need for guaranteed income, and its impact on families and communities. (These projects were supported separately and outside of artists’ participation as guaranteed income recipients.) Guaranteed Income is the G.O.A.T billboard by Kandace Creel Falcón. [Photo: Brittanni Smith/courtesy Springboard for the Arts] Artists have designed projects that range from podcasts and coloring books, to postcards, a public installation, and a collaborative performance/dance meditation made available on YouTube, all of which use messages that are reflective of their local communities. A billboard on rural Highway 210 by artist Kandace Creel Falcón looked at guaranteed incomes connection to rural values, with the message In Rural We Tend to the Herd as a way to root messaging in the collective values of that community and counter individualistic narratives that attempt to malign safety net programs. Artist and GI Pilot participant Mickey Breeze speaks during Basic Income Week at Springboard for the Arts, 2025. [Photo: Thai Phan-Quang /courtesy Springboard for the Arts] Cross-sector investment and collaboration are key Our original pilot was a cross-sector partnershipdesigned in collaboration with the City of Saint Pauls Peoples Prosperity Pilot guaranteed income program and supported by local and national funders including the McKnight, Bush, Surdna, and Ford Foundations. We recently announced the expansion of this work, which includes extending the Saint Paul pilot and adding additional participants to the pilot in Otter Tail County, Minnesota, totaling 100 artists across both locations and committing to five years. The majority of the pilots taking place across America have been 12 to 18 months, in part because that’s the amount of time that cities were able to raise and access relief funds during the pandemic. These are a great start, but to have the kind of longevity that will allow us to make a meaningfulnot just temporaryimpact requires bringing more and different kinds of partners on board and moving from pilots to policy. This is an area where philanthropy has an opportunity to be a true partner by seeding longer-term pilots in more geographies and by supporting advocacy and policy work. Artists Respond Cohort Member Kashimana performs during Basic Income Week 2025. [Photo: Thai Phan-Quang /courtesy Springboard for the Arts] Research and evidence matters When it comes to expanding the reach and impact of guaranteed income, research and evidence matters. Groups like Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, led by Saint Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, are integrating learning and research from local pilots into state and federal policy recommendations. Springboard for the Arts is working with the University of Pennsylvania Center for Guaranteed Income Research to collect data through community-led participatory research in both rural and urban locations, allowing us to understand whats working and how people are using these funds. Emergent themes from this research are compelling, with monthly income contributing to general financial stability; participants’ ability to do longer term planning toward healthcare, savings, business ownership and housing; and increasing financial security so artists can generate creative work for their community and stay in their neighborhoods. This money is going toward rent and supplies but its also being put to everyday expenses like fixing a car so that an artist can get to their job or buying snow boots for their children. Being able to point to these tangible impacts allows us to bring in more partners and more effectively advocate for policy. Even if it feels tedious, having a growing body of data will bolster all of our efforts for both individual programs and the movement as a whole. The experience with our pilot has shown us that guaranteed income works as a tool for supporting both an individuals economic security and their ability to contribute to their communities in creative ways. As our economy becomes even more stratified, there is an urgent need to advocate for policy innovations, like guaranteed income, that offer more Americans the freedom to take care of their families and communities and imagine and build a better future. The article was adapted from the chapter Artists as Allies in Economic Justice in the recently released Routledge Handbook of Urban Cultural Planning.
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