Create State
A place to gather, create, and make things happen.
Create State is Catalyst Guild's developing public community center, creative studio, and collaborative working environment.
Explore Create StateBuilding community capacity in public.
Skagit River Valley | Create Together. Ignite Tomorrow.
Here in the Skagit River Valley
A community center in the making. A network of people making things happen.
Catalyst Guild is a community-based collective in the Skagit River Valley.
We're establishing Create State, a public community center and working home, while bringing together a Community Generalist Network of people who create and sustain the resources, services, infrastructure, and cultural contexts that make community life possible.
Read more about the Guild
We're starting with what we can do now: gathering in existing spaces, sharing experience, building relationships, and helping promising projects find the people and resources to move forward.
Some of this work is professional. Much of it is volunteer work, personal initiative, and labor of love. All of it can contribute to making our communities more interesting, welcoming, capable, and resilient.
Come see what's taking shape.
Community
Generalist Network
The people making community life work.
Some people organize events, teach, maintain resources, develop programs, care for neighbors, create cultural experiences, or make things their communities need.
Explore the Network Tiaria’s personal field note ↗- If you've ever gone to Grandma's house for lunch and found yourself on a work crew, you might be a Community Generalist.
- If you know who has a ladder, who needs a ladder, and who's had your ladder since 2019, you might be a Community Generalist.
- If you've ever volunteered for an event and somehow wound up in charge of the volunteers, you might be a Community Generalist.
- If your neighborhood group chat has become an unofficial emergency dispatch service, you might be a Community Generalist.
- If you've ever put on a concert with borrowed equipment, donated food, three friends, and absolutely no budget, you might be a Community Generalist.
- If you have no idea how many people know each other because you introduced them, you might be a Community Generalist.
- If you've spent twenty years organizing a family and still insist you have no management experience, you might be a Community Generalist.
- If you've ever told someone you don't really volunteer anywhere, then spent half an hour describing all the things you do for people, you might be a Community Generalist.
- If your official job title explains almost nothing about the work you do in your community, you might be a Community Generalist.
- If somebody asks what you do and your first response is "Which day?", you might be a Community Generalist.
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Community projects and ideas
The Whiteboard
A public space in the making.
This will become a home for community projects, ideas, opportunities and invitations. For now, we're inviting people to help design what belongs here and how it could work. Tell us what would make it useful to you.
Other things taking shape
The Etchings
Community Chest
Developing shared access to material resources, equipment, services, space, and community support.
Explore Community Chest
Skagit Commons Wiki
Local knowledge and practical community information: places, organizations, resources and community history.
Explore Skagit Commons Wiki
Citizen Science Lab
Community-led observation and research opportunities.
Explore Citizen Science Lab
Community Tool Library
Practical equipment, learning resources, shared skills and project methods.
Explore Community Tool LibraryTools for collaborative work
The Evolving Toolbox
Useful things we're building, testing, and sharing.
Catalyst Guild is developing tools and resources that help people create, organize, collaborate, and contribute to their communities.
More about the Toolbox
Some will begin as simple experiments. Others may grow into shared infrastructure, ongoing programs, or independent projects.
We're interested in making these tools useful as they develop, learning from the people who use them, and finding out what else they might make possible.
Catalyst Media Lab
Your stories. Your voice. More ways to share them.
We're developing Catalyst Media Lab to help people create, prepare, and share journalism, stories, and other independent community media.
Explore Catalyst Media Lab Suggest a Story ↗Please do not send confidential source materials or sensitive documents through ordinary email.
Field Notes
Public Journal
From the workbench to the wider world.
We're learning by doing, and we'd like to share what happens along the way.
More about the Public Journal
The Public Journal is where we document our experiments, encounters, discoveries, projects, and the questions that come up as we work.
But we're just as interested in the stories other people have to tell.
We're developing opportunities for community reporters, writers, and storytellers to contribute their own observations, investigations, experiences, and creative work.
Sometimes a story begins with an investigation. Sometimes it begins with something somebody noticed that deserves a closer look.
There's a lot worth documenting.
Something happening in your neighborhood? An interesting person or project? A question you've been wanting somebody to investigate?
We'd like to hear about it.
You don't need to be a professional journalist or have a finished article. Tell us what you've noticed, what interests you, or what you think deserves a closer look.
Suggest a Story ↗Public JournalYou Might Be a Community Generalist If...An introduction to the many forms of community work.Read full articlePublic JournalHello, Skagit River Valley!October 28, 2026 · Tiaria GravesRead full articlePublic JournalSo, What's a Community Generalist?A personal field note from Tiaria Graves.Read full article
About Catalyst GuildPeople.
People.
Projects.
Places.
Possible.
Catalyst Guild is a community-based collective in the Skagit River Valley.
We're establishing a public home through Create State, connecting people engaged in community work, and exploring how shared knowledge, tools, expertise, and resources can help more projects succeed.
More about the Guild
We believe the things people do because they care, because they enjoy them, or simply because they want to be part of something can be just as important to community life as the work people are paid to perform.
We're interested in what becomes possible when people have more opportunities to find one another, pursue their interests, contribute their abilities, and acquire the means to accomplish what they're trying to do.
Create together. Ignite tomorrow.