Explore Atlanta’s neighborhoods through a new lens with these creative clubs

The group of about 17 that gathered in front of Atlanta Tech Village in South Downtown on a recent Saturday stood with camera straps across their chests and phones in hand as they waited for the photo walk to begin.

Many came to Wander Creative Club alone, though conversation flowed easily among attendees. For the next two hours or so, all would look at South Downtown through the lens or screen of whatever photography device they brought.

Gavin Guidry launched Wander Creative Club a year ago to connect with more creatives and to build creativity into his everyday life. Attendees of Wander’s monthly meetups explore different neighborhoods in Atlanta, building community with others who also carved out a few hours of their weekend.

“It’s making the mundane and the everyday beautiful,” Guidry said.

Turning creativity into a lifestyle

Guidry is a photographer, content creator and videographer who works as a creative director for Spotify. When he first started in a creative career, Guidry said he became good enough to make a job out of it because of time spent around other people who shared the same curiosity and creative drive.

His job at Spotify often keeps him behind his desk, so he launched Wander Creative Club in November 2025 with an inaugural stroll around Atlanta’s Castleberry Hill neighborhood.

“It’s a little bit about like, how do I lead a creative lifestyle and help sort of facilitate that for other people as well,” Guidry said.

Walking around a neighborhood gives a person a different perspective of a place they may drive past every day, Guidry said, and encourages curiosity about the people and buildings.

Pearl Kaplan walks the streets of her Virginia-Highland neighborhood, often, as she commutes to and from work on foot. The monotony of passing the same places every day makes her feel sad sometimes, she said, and it doesn’t inspire much creativity. She wanted to come on the Wander to explore a new place and hopefully find renewed inspiration.

“I do feel like it shows me more of what’s possible in Atlanta than what I see every day,” she said.

Previous Wanders have brought attendees through neighborhoods like Castleberry Hill, Sweet Auburn, Summerhill and the West End. The latest series throughout November focuses on exploring the South Downtown redevelopment. The first edition centered on the architecture and history of the area, with a surprise visit from a History Afoot Atlanta historian. The Nov. 14 and 21 events will focus on makers and businesses and street art and culture, respectively.

“When you have a camera in your hand, it becomes almost like this tool to slow down even more and notice the beauty and the dignity of a place,” Guidry said.

When planning a Wander, Guidry always likes to partner with a business or figure in the neighborhood that can offer a place for everyone to meet up ahead of time, allowing participants to speak with local business owners or neighborhood characters.

One of Guidry’s favorite Wanders was in Summerhill, when Rosco Cummings, the owner of JD’s Summerhill Variety Deli, introduced the group to some of the chickens he raises in the backyard.

“What ends up being the takeaway, I think, from most people, are those really chance meetings that happen either between other people or just what we find on the walk,” he said. “We need more space to do that in our lives.”

Walking brings new perspectives

Stepping outside of one’s familiar routine can bring a new perspective to the art a person creates. Photo wanders aren’t the only way creatives are accomplishing this. For those more inclined to pen and paper, Atlanta Pen Pushers is an urban sketching group that brings members on sketch walks around the city.

Through Atlanta Pen Pushers, founder Trisha Mitra developed a love for dumpsters, concrete and lampposts, thanks in part to her co-host Nick Twiner.

Mitra started the urban sketching group about a year and a half ago as a way to get back to sketching for fun, outside of the work she does at an architecture firm and freelance illustrations.

“Doing these sketch walks really loosened me up,” she said. “I have all these tools and methods that I rely on and have been relying on for years, and they were stripped of me.”

The group has grown beyond her colleagues and now includes people from all backgrounds, from beginners just starting to draw to professionals. Twiner and Mitra plot the route ahead of the bimonthly meetings. Attendees walk to a planned location, where they have a short time to draw before moving on to the next. They’ve also added a community service aspect to make Valentine’s Day cards for a nursing home and painting birdhouses for a charity auction.

“I started to pay more attention in my day-to-day life, just looking around, noticing what can be art,” she said. Twiner, an Atlanta artist and puzzle creator, has a passion for concrete and dumpsters, she said, so now when she’s driving down an overpass or past some dumpsters, she’s started to see the beauty in those, too.

Building a community of creatives

At Wander Creative Club, not everyone is a professional photographer — many attendees do photography as a hobby, or are looking to get back into it after a hiatus. The equipment ranges from iPhones to DSLRs to film cameras.

Wander photographers are mostly left to explore and photograph whatever they want. Rather than a photography lesson, it offers participants dedicated time to experiment with their cameras and creative vision.

In addition to fostering creativity, Guidry also wants to facilitate connections between creatives. There’s no clear pathway toward a creative career, and he’s seen firsthand the value in talking to people across all disciplines.

Cody Alexander has been attending Wander from the start, and the networking and community-building aspect is part of what keeps drawing him back.

“It’s really cool to see what I capture versus what they capture, because it’s effectively the same thing but just different POVs,” he said.

For each Wander, Guidry sets up a Discord server for attendees to share photos from the walk and see what grabbed others’ attention.

“Honestly, if the only thing I ever get out of this is a place to share my photos with a few other people in a group that’s not on Instagram, then job done,” Guidry said.

In some ways, Wander Creative Club is building a repository of photos depicting the people and places at one moment in Atlanta’s story.

Photography is so vital because it’s a record of history, attendee Briana Catley said. She recommends that everyone do it, “whether you have a cellphone or a $5,000 camera, it doesn’t matter.”

“If we can help Atlanta see itself a little bit more, that could be such a big and great sort of takeaway from all of this,” Guidry said. “We’re gonna end up with a huge library of photos that show what Atlanta looks like from a host of different perspectives.”