Derrick Weston Brown went viral with his poem, “We Can’t Have Nothing.” How viral did it go? It was all over the internet. Some inmates at San Quintin State Prison did a dramatic interpretation of it. Just when Derrick thought it lost its steam, he and the poem were featured in a segment on Aljazeera.

Derrick went that viral, but he didn’t leave his community behind. Instead, he reached back to create opportunities for other creatives. Here’s his story of the latter—how he did it.