The Creatives: Photographer and videographer Dorcas Brandon

Hometown: Baton Rouge

Age: 43

Artistry: Associate Director, The Red Shoes; Photographer/Videographer, Locally Vocal

Online: theredshoes.org, @locally___vocal

Creativity can do greater than put a canvas on a wall. It can put meals on the desk.

A former educator within the public college system, Dorcas Brandon serves as affiliate director of the ladies’s wellness nonprofit The Red Shoes, and considered one of her objectives is to maintain its Community Fridge on Delphine Street, off Government Street, totally stocked for these in want.

“Awareness is through the roof right now,” she famous throughout our interview on day 37 of the federal authorities shutdown final fall, a stretch that noticed entry to SNAP funding lower for some beneficiaries. “With that campaign, I want to be very intentional, from being in front of the camera and incorporating my personality in the videos, to the music I choose. What draws people? What feeling do they get when they watch this? Well, the response since I started has been overwhelming.”

Brandon’s video work started as easy month-to-month life updates, however from Flower Fest’s charitable blooms to Ellemnop’s daring artwork showcases, they shortly advanced into colorfully cultural vignettes beneath the identify Locally Vocal—with the artist seeming to pop up in every single place real neighborhood and creativity intersect and capturing that constructive vitality for Instagram reels.

Brandon and her digicam are a fixture at Baton Rouge Gallery’s month-to-month First Wednesday occasions, and in 2025, she produced the gallery’s In the Studio artist sequence. The award-winning artist’s dream-like, usually surreal pictures has appeared in a number of galleries and neighborhood occasions, a step that took some bravery.

“I like to put a play date on my calendar,” she says, “with the intention of creating something, but with no clue of what the outcome will be.”

This inventive braveness first arrived when she attended an artwork and entrepreneurship convention hosted by guide and BRAF veteran Gerri Hobdy.

“Suddenly, I was hearing the possibilities that come with being an artist, and up to that point I had not really considered myself one,” Brandon admits. “But I knew it was in there.”

Embracing her id as an artist has made her an arts ambassador inside a inventive neighborhood, going as viral as a few of her movies unfold from Instagram story to story, and a first-rate motivator for the meals filling the Community Fridge.

“Just being more outwardly authentic, your people find you,” Brandon says. “I can say I’ve never felt so supported in the Baton Rouge art community, but then, I’ve never been so outwardly expressive in the art community, either. So it’s quite interesting how that works.”