It sounds like you might be asking for communities rather than instances.
!historyartifacts@piefed.social
!Art_Alchemist_Guild@lemmy.today
These are some nice ones. Not all are always super active all the time but there's usually some activity. I'll update my list if I can think of more
No worries, takes some getting used to when you're new here :) If you look at my links its basically
communityname @ instance
But the question sort of works for instances too so since some might have more communities that you are interested in, that's why people kept replying with instance suggestions. You can still see communities from wherever though as long as your account's instance is federated with them