Visible Conversations: Fran Bittakis Part 1 - The Making of Joop Joop Creative
Fran Bittakis is the founder and Creative Director of Joop Joop Creative, a radical creative agency and talent management for multidisciplinary creatives of color, womxn/nb, lgbtqia2s+ and their accomplices in Portland, OREGON since 2019. Join Fran and the Beauty Shop team for part 1 of Fran's interview.
A conversation with the Visible HQ Team
Jen: So you recently launched a creative studio! Tell us about all the awesomeness going on at Joop Joop. What are you working on? Who are the folks you want to work for and with, and where will Joop Joop be in ten years?
Fran: Joop Joop is a culmination of all my education since I was a young kid and through high school and all of the social justice work that I’ve done since I was eighteen years old. I went to a magnet school in Chicago that I didn’t realize was a different kind of school—I had photography, dark room, radio, all these different kinds of art and science classes that I didn’t know were special, and that really got me into the love of the creative arts. And then when I [moved] to Florida, I went to Dr. Phillip’s High School and went to a visual performing arts program. I learned how to do lights and sound, props, costumes, makeup. And then my first job out of high school, I was seventeen, and I was taught lights and sounds at the Horror Makeup Show at Universal Studios across the street and everybody hated me because I was seventeen and I got that job.
Everybody that worked there that was an actor felt like they were on Broadway, lot of egos. I’d was permanently traumatized by going to see the show on my day off. There was a bit in the show where they have this zombie lady, and she’ll put her arm around you, but they always pick a foreign woman who they think can’t speak English because they apparently have the most ridiculous reaction, like a really scared reaction. And I happened to go there on a day when I didn’t know any of the actors and they picked me because they saw my face but they didn’t know that I worked there. And so I had to act like I didn’t speak English and I didn’t know what was going on…never again will I go another comedy thing, another improv thing, I’m just never going to do that ever again.
After that, I never really did any theater stuff and I never found a person to sort of take me under their wing, so then that’s when I started doing more activist work. It was a weird transition, but then that naturally led to me throwing punk shows and producing events. I threw a couple of punk rock coms in Orlando and always with workshops and always with activism tied to music. So I’m not really surprised that was the running theme until now. So that got the ball rolling and trying to figure out how could I do creative work in different ways and explore my own creativity, which I had not been able to do in my whole life, because my parents, [were] like you’re going to do this, this, when I wanted to play the flute! They’re like, “No you’re playing the violin!”
Liz: What did your parents want you to do? What was their vision for you?
Fran: I think because they were immigrants, they had this very generic vision of what their child was supposed to be. It’s always you should be a nurse, a doctor, an engineer, or a lawyer. There’s all these funny stereotypes that I didn’t even understand how they translated to immigrants that moved to this country. The idea that being a Thai person or an Asian woman and being tied to tennis, violin, ice skating, all these funny things. My parents are also a lot older. My mom had me when she was forty, so there’s definitely a language barrier, culture gap, generation gap. There was so many obstacles for me to be able to even have a general rapport with them. It’s really challenging.
I wanted to be an artist and a vet. I ended up taking violin, ballet, and tap, and jazz, tennis, ice skating, and swimming, and I hated all of it. I found myself having to sneak around to be able to express my creativity in other ways, having that drive to get what I want without getting caught. And being able to problem solve and find a way really built the foundation for me to be an effective producer. Because if you need something, you want something, you have to find a way to make it happen.
Even when I started doing activist work again, I went and found a woman of color that was radical in politics to see as a therapist because I knew that I needed that support to be able to do this work, and I haven’t seen her in the last three months because I don’t have enough money to do that. And I also had just found a therapist in LA that works specifically with artists, but they’d given me more like a business consult person for me and I had to stop seeing them too. So it’s like right when everything is going, because I don’t have the funds to be able to have that support, I’m struggling.
I have no idea, what class is arbitrary for you that you just don’t care about. Ideally, I really hope that in ten years all of us are really coming together and really trying to meet each other and create a good foundation and platform for us to really make change in Portland, because it’s a place that is teeming with creatives, and everybody is just so scared that they’re going to miss out on a piece of the pie. And the thing is that the pie is actually really really huge, and none of us have to fight for a piece.
“I wish that I could just dive in head first and be like yes, I’m a bad B, I feel my power. I think it’s that idea of being scared to fail.”
Kristin: Speaking of money, what money do you want. What clients is Joop Joop is the market of looking for right now. Who do want to work for?
Fran: I’ve always tended to stay away from corporations, a lot of the work that I do is on the community level. A huge part and problem that I have is doing activist work for so long and never getting paid for it, and then now trying to figure out how to monetize what I’m doing in a way where I feel my own power and other people can say, “yes, you’re getting paid well for what you’re doing because you’re worth it,” and not being nickle and dimed all the time for what I want to do. If Wieden or Nike or Adidas or whoever wanted to pay me to teach a workshop or have an incubator or whatever, I probably would do that very carefully. But really, the work that I want to do is for my community. So I don’t know, it’s a tough question because I want the money, but the people that I want to help don’t have it.
Even with agencies, I feel like especially the bigger ones, they’re putting out communication in the world. And a friend told me, just short of politics, communication is the next biggest thing. I think really really trying to get the folks that work at those places to understand that it just can’t keep going the way that it’s going and that they really need to make a huge effort to incorporate other lenses in their work to be able to communicate effectively.
Jen: This is the time it would happen. If it’s gonna happen, this is the time. There’s going to be somebody who wants to do it now.
Liz: And that rich person doesn’t have the knowledge that you have, or the personality that you have, so it’s going to be worth it to them.
Fran: And even just being this person who is coming into my own power and seeing people telling me all the time, you know you have this amazing power, you have this amazing way of talking to people and I a lot of the time, am still like, I can’t see it, I don’t believe it, I don’t know…just so unsure. And I can tell that something is changing and I wish that I could just dive in head first and be like yes, I’m a bad B, I feel my power. I think it’s that idea of being scared to fail. Coming up with all of these ideas and being really excited about it, and it just literally never going anywhere, or just realizing that as a woman of color, it’s actually going to be ten times harder for me to make this work than someone else. So I do go back and forth about feeling my power, and then feeling no power at all.
It’s definitely a struggle but I know that’s kind of a constant for all of us anyway. Like sometimes my husband’s like damn, I love how you talk about stuff and you’re just so fired up and the next day you’re like being so self-deprecating and like you don’t know how to do anything. It’s not a contest and I have to remember that what I’m doing is what I’m doing, and I can’t always be concerned with where other people are at and how I’m going to get the resources that they have to do the thing that they’re doing. And I’m also am trying to make peace with my own timing. I can only get this done as fast as I can being a person. It can only go as fast as I can make it go. That part is something I feel a huge amount of relief from is actually acknowledging that. Because you always feel like you’re supposed to be somewhere at some time and I’m like I’m forty, and I’m having a midlife crisis!
Liz: That’s what we see when we see you. It’s like, it’s so obvious that Fran is going to do all the shit.
Fran: Haha! Every time I come here, I’m like can I rent a desk or something? If we don’t end up moving into our new space or something…it feels so good to be here. And then I’m like, why did [this] take so long? It took me like a year to be like, ok, I’ll meet with [Visible] and see what’s going on. But I was just in a completely different place. I just didn’t know if I could do it. And then a year went by and I’m like, I have to do it. I can’t miss this opportunity to be able to give my input. And even that first time we met, we talked for three hours and it went by like nothing. And having the first board meeting…this is real, and it’s really cool to feel that love and support. And I think also, being the person that I am, I’m always the person that people look up to, but very rarely do I have that person to look up to, and I just see all of you as that person, that entity. I’m like ok, cool, they see me, I see them, we can keep working and talking and collaborating, and learn from each other.
Jen: That's what I think when I need to feel better about myself. I’m like, oh I need to be more like Fran.
Fran: Ya, I’m into it. It’s a lot of self work and I think that work is never done. And I think having other amazing women, I mean, I come here like every other week and it’s just like, so cool.
Kristin: I’m always like, Fran came and stood next to me and now I feel better.
“If you’re going to be a source of change, you really really have to do that work for yourself”
Liz: What does radical mean to you? What is a radical creative studio?
Fran: As far as what is it - what is a radical creative studio - I think it’s adding that social justice framework to work that already exists. The stupid thing is that I don’t even think that any of this should be radical, right? Everybody should just be running on a basic human level that is kind and conscious in the first place, so that’s the other upsetting part about even having to do this work or wanting to do this work. Like man, how far have we really gone as a species to get to the point where we get a cookie for being accepting? But I think that word can be really empowering. I’ve really struggled with the verbiage I’m using in my one sentence bio, and someone told me, oh, I think you should move the social justice framework part to the end because I think some people will read it in the beginning, where I had it, and get freaked out and not want to engage any further. And I’m like, ok?
Jen: But then do you want those people?
Julie: Also, is that tested, like do you know that to be true or is that another assumption?
Group: Ya…
Fran: Either way, I don’t know. This is the part with business strategy. I feel very David and Goliath with what I’m doing. It’s very overwhelming and really scary, but just the idea that within six months I’ve already been able to meet with Adidas and Wieden and all these different places makes me feel like there is a space that I can make for myself and space that I can take up. And I want to bring all the best people along to make that happen.
Liz: There’s a need for you. It’s not even just like can I get in there and do my thing, it’s like there’s a vacuum. There’s like a space that you’re needed to fill.
Fran: And that’s the scariest part when you think about it. All these people are reaching out because they know that their businesses will be left in the dust if they don’t get it together. The hard part is double-downing in Portland, the work is two steps back, [maybe] ten steps backwards. It really does feel that way across the board in every community that I’ve been a part of. If I go to Oakland or NY or LA and talk to an activist, they’re doing these epic projects that I’m floored and think this would be amazing to bring to Portland. I [can] try to bring some baby version of it here and it’s just like, this place is just so deep-seeded in white supremacy that it’s really hard to navigate.
And like I said, amongst other brown and black folks in this town who have not done their own work or their own anti-blackness work or other work, it’s hard. And so it’s like those nuances, I feel like Adidas wouldn’t understand that, Nike wouldn’t understand that…it’s rainbow. “Do you know what the difference between a femme and a lesbian is?” I’ve been asked that question, and it’s shocking to hear someone in a power position asking someone like me what that means. You’re putting a lot of content out in the world. And I know that you’re advocating for women and people of color in your agency, but if you’re doing that work without knowing those differences, you’re causing more harm because you don’t even have the full picture to begin with.
We’re both doing kind of the same work, but there’s a missing part in there. And with most corporations, I can sell a workshop—that’s one thing, but to bring a workshop to an organization or corporation that’s very white, a whole other level of that is bringing those kinds of workshops to other brown and black folks, or other queer folks or other women. I know now after getting burned so many times doing this work that just because you are a woman doesn’t mean that I can completely trust you. Just because you are a brown or black person doesn’t mean that I can completely trust you, and those are really hard lessons to learn because everyone’s at a different part of their journey. It’s like how do you make it digestible? How do you give it in just the right doses for it to really stick with people? How do you give it to them in a way that will really resonate with them or make them really understand what that feels like to be a person that you are not? If you’re going to be a source of change, you really really have to do that work for yourself.
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Tune into part 2 of Fran Bittakis’ interview in our latest post in Visible Voices!