@Starlet Breast Cancer fundraiser

Why Pink Bloom is Close to My Heart

This October, @Starlet Creative Hub will turn pink.

We are planning a very special Pink Bloom breast cancer fundraiser, and for me, this one is deeply personal.

In 2018, at just 37 years old, I found a lump in my breast.

What followed changed the course of my life.

I was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer and underwent chemotherapy, radiation, a double mastectomy and further surgeries. Cancer interrupted my career, changed my body and health, frightened my family and forced me to confront, far earlier than I ever expected, just how uncertain life can be.

But strangely, threaded through all of that loss and uncertainty was creativity.

I wrote.

I made things.

I returned to theatre.

I created work from experiences that were difficult to put into ordinary conversation. Eventually, my experience of breast cancer found its way onto the stage through Breaking Breast, and creativity became not simply something I did, but one of the ways I made sense of what had happened to me.

And somewhere along that journey came an increasingly strong conviction:

If we have time to create something meaningful, perhaps we should.

That philosophy sits quietly underneath much of what I do today.

It is part of the reason I founded Starlet Creative Industries, and it is very much part of the heart behind @Starlet Creative Hub.

@Starlet exists because I wanted to create a place where people could have a go.

A place to write the play.

Paint the painting.

Start the little business.

Put on the exhibition.

Gather people around a table.

Perform something for the first time.

Meet someone who inspires the next idea.

Or simply walk through the door and discover a creative community waiting on the other side.

Cancer taught me that there isn't always a perfect time coming later.

Sometimes, if something matters to us, we need to begin.

So this October, @Starlet will bring those two parts of my story together as we host a Pink Bloom fundraiser for breast cancer.

It will be an opportunity to gather, eat, laugh, connect and raise money for a cause that remains extraordinarily close to my heart.

It will also be a celebration.

Of the women we've lost.

Of the women living through treatment.

Of survivors.

Of families and friends who walk beside them.

And of the lives that continue beyond a diagnosis.

Eight years after finding that lump, I get to stand inside a creative hub that once existed only as an idea and watch people walk through its doors carrying ideas of their own.

I don't take that for granted.

So this October, we'll gather at @Starlet, add rather a lot of pink, raise some money and celebrate the wonderful, messy, creative privilege of being here to do it.

More details about Pink Bloom @Starlet will be coming very soon.

Marianne Buchanan
Founder & Director
@Starlet Creative Hub
Starlet Creative Industries