As more and more people telecommute or work non-traditional jobs, coworking spaces are meeting some very practical needs. In the past five years, they’ve grown by more than 200% as people look for structure, community and accountability. Epiphany Space, which exists to serve Hollywood’s creative professionals, goes outside the box and seeks to be a place for work, soul care, and even family.
Epiphany Space’s founder, Melissa Smith, recently took some time to share about her passion project.
TogetherLA: Epiphany Space was born out of some crazy circumstances. Tell us how Epiphany Space came to be.
Melissa Smith:
There are a number of ways God spoke to me about this desire [to create Epiphany Space], and the steps toward execution. I’ll try to consolidate. If you want the whole story of visions, dreams, confirmations, and tests, just ask - I love telling it! It all starts in 2008, when my screenwriter husband Bren and I left our vibrant artist community in New York City to pursue his film career in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, we arrived during the 2008 financial crisis and the WGA writer’s strike.
We experienced firsthand the challenges of being creatives in LA. The sunshine and pace of life in LA is wonderful, but work schedules, geography, excessive traffic, and the exorbitant cost of living - not to mention separation from family, for most of us who have moved away from home to be here - perpetuate a sense of isolation and disconnection.
My husband and I saw a need for a place where independent and freelance artists could gather, work on their own projects and be in an intentional life-giving community.
One day, while driving past the Warner Brothers studio lot on my way to volunteer with a local non-profit, I had an open vision from God. In the vision, there were three glass boxes, each box contained a house and the houses represented a perfectly good life blessed of God. The first house was “low risk, low reward,” the second house was “moderate risk, moderate reward,” and the final house was “high risk, high reward.” In that moment God asked me to choose which life I would have. In my heart of hearts, I knew that if I chose either of the first two I would always wonder what the “high risk, high reward” life would have been. So I chose the third box.
Yes. I did that.
As I grappled with the aforementioned challenges of life in my new city, I began to envision a large facility that could host a vibrant multi-disciplinary community including film, theater, dance, music and fine art. Various mediums of art and craft informing each other. Facility, talent and resources being shared. People from every walk of life creating together. Collaboration and encouragement, not toxic competition. Resources to help creatives become healthy and thriving - which impacted their art. Life and creative energy flowing through the space and out into the world around it. God’s creative presence filled the place and influenced everyone who came near.
Anyone who has started something new has probably asked the questions I asked: is this my thing, or does it already exist and can I be a part of it? Where can I even find out about something like this? If it doesn’t exist, who can help me create it - or am I all on my own?
Through advice and intercession, my role became clear: create an artist community and coworking space that also makes room for artists’ spiritual and emotional support.
As a New York executive, I had been a key player in starting restaurants, catering companies and a corporate dining facility. But that was all in collaboration and under the oversight of other people who carried the vision (and the funding). I had never dreamed of venturing out on my own until this desire for a creative hub began haunting my dreams and waking hours.
I started with what I had. Friends and I co-worked in each other’s apartments. I began meeting with artists of all disciplines for coffee, hearing their stories, helping them process life and pain. I was ordained and commissioned as a minister by my home church in Georgia and in 2010 we formed a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization for Epiphany Space. The big challenge for us was how to take Epiphany Space from a private living room to a public space in expensive Los Angeles - Hollywood, no less.
Then I got pregnant. It was the spring of 2013, and I had a dream that my husband and I forgot we had a surrogate. In the dream, the surrogate was fully pregnant on the birthing table and I was behind her - also fully pregnant - helping her give birth. The dream ended with my husband and I having two girls!
I knew the dream was significant, but was not sure why until a few months later. Ecclesia, our local church community, asked if Epiphany Space would be interested in sharing a building - a former preschool just off Sunset Boulevard. Renting space in someone else’s building did not fit my initial vision, but the surrogate dream gave me courage to move forward and accept the offer.
Epiphany Space had $2,000 in our bank account when I toured the new location, so we launched an IndieGogo campaign to raise $50,000. We campaigned hard, our creative community and friends back home gave generously. And when the campaign ended (scheduled to coincide with my baby’s supposed arrival), we had not met our goal and I had not started labor. I sat in my rocking chair on my due date with $4,500 and no baby.
Uncomfortably tired, with a swirl of thoughts and emotions, I decided. We were moving forward. We had barely enough money to pay the first month’s rent and I’d probably have to move most of the secondhand furniture from my apartment into the space, but we were moving forward.
Then I got an email from friends to see how the campaign and I were doing. I sent an emotional and rambling email to them. They were out of the country but responded, saying they had some money put aside that they had wanted to contribute to a good cause. The funds had only become available that morning, so they were writing to let me know that a check for $40,000 was on its way.
I cried. I was completely overwhelmed. It felt to me like God said, “You’ve done your part, now let me do mine.”
My daughter was born a few days later, and we received the keys to our new space. Family members flew in, friends volunteered and together we transformed the rooms with paint and elbow grease. We made a few strategic purchases and scoured secondhand shops for furniture. Pirate Art Department, our set designer friends, created tables and a work bar. Our doors opened in October 2013, less than a month later, with our daughter Viola as our mascot.
I was surprised (and am now thankful), by how I was shaped in the midst of this journey to create and birth Epiphany Space. I became a mother, a minister and a non-profit executive at the same time. I felt intimidated at the prospect of having my daughter and the co-working community simultaneously,but having her with me in the space was a huge part of inviting people to the family of Epiphany Space. My unhealthy independence and perfectionism yielded to the refining of motherhood and learning to thrive with limited resources.
