By Taylor Adams Cogan
When Lauren O’Connor first arrived in Dallas in 2004, she came chasing music. She’d left her Delaware hometown to study audio engineering and business, and was easily drawn to the sound and energy coming out of Deep Ellum.
“Seeing these big bands and being a part of this community was the first time I actually felt a part of a community,” she says. “You walk into a club – Three Links, Curtain Club before that – and people know you right away. You show up for each other.”
That sense of belonging stayed with her. Over the past 20 years, on and off, O’Connor has called Deep Ellum home. After all, the neighborhood not only shaped her as someone who appreciates music, but it also gave rise to her calling as a community builder and mental health advocate.
Her first steps into nonprofit work came in 2012 with Girls Rock Dallas, where she helped young musicians find their voice and confidence.
“That was really my first time meeting the business owners and getting to know the neighborhood on a deeper level,” she says. “They were always so supportive, personally and professionally.”
In 2018, O’Connor took over leadership of Foundation 45, the Dallas nonprofit providing free mental health services for adults in creative industries. The organization was born from tragedy a decade earlier, after the deaths of local musicians Adam Carter and Frankie Campagna, members of the Deep Ellum band Spector 45. In response, friends and fellow creatives, including surviving band member Anthony Delabano and counselor Zandra Ellis, created a space for artists to heal and support one another.
O’Connor has carried that mission forward. Under her leadership, the now-called Amplified Minds expanded from one or two support groups a week to six, all led by licensed professional counselors. These include specialized sessions for the LGBTQIA+ community, artists of color, and those dealing with substance use, offered both in person and virtually, free of cost, to anyone in Texas.
“The mission is simple,” O’Connor says. “We provide free mental health services to our creative community: quality care so they can take care of everyone else.”
The work continues to keep its deep roots in Deep Ellum. The group’s first suicide-prevention session was held at Life in Deep Ellum in 2014, and the community has continued to show up ever since. O’Connor recalls their first-ever Narcan Happy Hour, hosted by Scott Beggs at Three Links.
“It was historic. Nothing like that had ever been done here before,” she says. “We gave out 150 units of Narcan. The support was unbelievable.”
That collaboration – between venues, artists, and nonprofits – defines the neighborhood for her.
“It wouldn’t have been possible without the help of this community,” she says, nodding to fundraisers like Art of the Guitar at Trees that raised more than $22,000. “As someone who came from no community, I can tell you how important it is to have these spaces. Without them, people feel lost.”
O’Connor says she’s seen it firsthand, through her own experience moving away and coming back, and through the countless people Amplified Minds helps every year.
“The last five years, especially through COVID, have shown how much we rely on one another,” she says. “The community has given me a place to call home.”
O’Connor still spends much of her time in the neighborhood, balancing her roles as nonprofit leader, advocate, and friend to the countless artists, business owners, and creatives who know her by name.
“Everybody knows me, I’m in every place in Deep Ellum,” she says. “But that’s the point. We take care of each other here.”
