Raw and Radical is an artistic platform, podcast series, inspirational resource, and community, created to support cis and transgender women who are working to realize their creative and artistic potential, further their careers, and challenge inequity and misogyny in both society and the art world.

Through intensive interviews with women and transgender women artists, the Raw and Radical platform explores multiple, recurring themes that are critical to understanding what it means to be an artist and succeeding in artistic goals—whether those are individual, social, or financial. We explore themes of identity, vulnerability, authenticity, loneliness, alienation, discrimination, inspiration, empowerment, and social change.

As a young career-oriented woman and later as a mother, I struggled to find time to make art and be the artist I knew I was supposed to be. During that time, I often wished that I had a “biography in the making” to reference—a resource that wasn’t just a retrospective of someone’s artistic success, but that delved deeply into the struggles and challenges they faced as creative women and maintaining a creative practice.

The Raw and Radical platform is that present-day biography, exploring the raw underbelly of what it means to be a woman in the arts, connecting women through their “lowlight” instead of “highlight” reels so that they can live more authentically, boldly, and unapologetically, stepping into their creative power and becoming a force for personal, community, and global change.

Raw and Radical is the brainchild of Mauren Brobeck, a Geneva-born artist who explores the concepts of personal identity, creativity, and how our personal expression is influenced by conventional social norms or rules of conduct.

Mauren struggled for many years to prioritize her creative work, first as a working woman and later as a mother, often finding herself caught between doing what was expected of her and following her artistic calling. During this time, she found herself wishing for a supportive community of other women artists so they could share their struggles, triumphs, and advice on living more fulfilling creative lives.

To answer this need, she created Raw and Radical. Through her podcast interviews with other women creatives, Mauren explores how women access and express their creativity, the societal challenges and discrimination they face, and how they push through to find personal fulfilment and public success. Through the Raw and Radical platform, she works to inspire and empower women to discover their inner strengths and liberate their creativity to live boldly and authentically.