About
Common Root Collective (CRC) was founded by artist, educator, and community advocate Amity Vargas. After experiencing life-threatening illness that led to hospice care, neurological injury, and long-term cognitive recovery, Amity discovered that art was more than expression — it was a mechanism for rebuilding. Through creative practice, she began restoring cognitive pathways, regulating her nervous system, and reconnecting to purpose after profound medical and personal challenges.
As a late-diagnosed neurodivergent adult, Amity also came to understand how neurological differences such as ADHD and Autism are frequently misunderstood or identified later in life, especially when layered with trauma or complex health histories. Her lived experience, combined with ongoing study in neuroplasticity and neurobiology, now shapes CRC’s research-informed approach to creativity, learning design, and community engagement.
What began as one person’s survival evolved into a broader mission: expanding both access to creative practice and access to creative opportunity.
CRC recognizes that creative ability is deeply personal and powerful — yet access to education, visibility, professional networks, and income-generating pathways is not equally distributed. Emerging artists, youth, disabled creatives, neurodivergent individuals, and nontraditional learners frequently encounter barriers that limit both personal growth and professional advancement. CRC works to build sustainable bridges between creative expression, skill development, and economic participation.
Through maker and trade-based education, environmental learning programs, structured mentorship, public markets, exhibitions, and skill-building workshops, CRC supports artists in developing real-world competencies, entrepreneurial tools, portfolio development, and professional exposure. Programs are intentionally designed to serve both personal growth and long-term creative sustainability.
CRC integrates art, applied research, innovation, and community-based education to reimagine creative ecosystems. We actively study neuroplasticity, regulation science, and the neurobiology of creativity to inform how environments are structured — particularly for individuals navigating ADHD, ASD, trauma histories, or cognitive variability. This research lens ensures that programming is accessible, responsive, and grounded in evidence.
By combining inclusive design, professional opportunity, and research-informed practice, CRC builds ecosystems where artists can learn, earn, collaborate, and lead.
Today, CRC continues to grow as a collective rooted in resilience, applied research, economic empowerment, and creative inclusion — cultivating spaces where healing and opportunity coexist, and where every artist has both the freedom to create and the pathways to thrive.
Board of Directors
Amity Vargas, President
Savannah Michael, Secretary
Jorge Vargas, Treasurer
Penelope Brown,
Volunteer & Marketing Coordinator
Community Land Acknowledgement
The Pikes Peak region is situated on the ancestral homeland of the Ute Peoples, who are the Southern Ute, Ute Mountain Ute, and Northern Ute. Other tribes who lived and hunted on this land include the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, and Apache. Even through forced relocation and land dispossession, we recognize that the land still holds Ute traditions, language, stories, and history. Today, Indigenous people from many Native nations reside here and continue to make significant contributions to our community.