MISSION

We offer transformational arts-based experiences to promote healing, foster personal growth, instigate public conversations, and connect communities.  Our haiku/rap/poetry and art-making programs empower under-resourced and under-represented people to counter the stigmas often associated with trauma and illness and to speak their truths.

VISION

We are working to create a world where more people have access to art-based practices that promote health, improve quality of life, and foster deeper connections with their communities, families and themselves.

VALUES

• We believe that art making is a way of grieving and fighting back against the systemic pressures which make communities sick in body and spirit.

• We believe that everyone is an artist, every life journey has deeper meaning, and everyone deserves the opportunity to explore, imagine and communicate their life story in a safe, non-judgmental environment.

• We practice art as advocacy for access to quality, comprehensive healthcare for ALL as a universal and basic human right.

• We honor the body as a teacher of profound wisdom and insight.

• We see illness as not only misfortune or struggle but rather an opportunity to more faithfully portray our truth about where we are that day, freed from expectations that we always show a positive face to others, as if it is our job to alleviate their discomfort with our reality.

• We believe that art making transforms victims into interpreters, whose keen insight into the complexities of living with illness or trauma in turn transforms illness-free viewers through the grace of greater empathy and understanding.

• We use art-making to explore issues like power dynamics and gender inequalities as they relate to one’s own life journey.