At its heart, Light Fires is a project which prioritizes arts-based approaches to education, research and advocacy. Art is incorporated throughout all of our programs and initiatives. Importantly, we value and recognize art in its many forms, whether visual, textual, auditory/oral or a combination, and we do not ascribe to values which label some art "good" and some art "bad." Instead, we are focused on art's capacity for impact on both individual and community levels. The following principles provide some background for our commitment to including art throughout our work.

Art is survival

For incarcerated people, creativity can provide a space of reprieve, a place where an individual can feel safe within the extreme and often violent environment of the prison. Art is also material survival for many people who sell their art as a means to provide for themselves and their families.

Art is resistance

Prison art amplifies voices and perspectives that are routinely silenced and sidelined in research, education, policy, and law. For people who are incarcerated, creative expression is a way to voice their experiences of incarceration, mobilize critique, and share their visions for social change. It is a way of speaking up and speaking back.

Art is medicine

Creativity is a pathway for cultural transmission, where Indigenous peoples can revitalize and resurge their traditional knowledge systems. Indigenous knowledge systems are healing to the individual and to the collective.

Art is language

Indigenous worldviews live within Indigenous languages. Art is a way for people to experience and express the worldviews contained in Indigenous languages, inviting both the artist and those experiencing the art to engage in relational decolonial communication.

Art is accessible

While there are aspects of art creation that require specific skill sets, creativity broadly is accessible to all people and includes an array of intentions, emotions, processes, and projects. Access to spaces and resources to create art is limited in prison, and it is our responsibility to advocate for increased access to art supplies, art mentorship, and pathways to disseminate and sell prisoner art

Art is worldbuilding

Story-telling through art has long been a practice of Indigenous communities. It is through our individual and collective stories that we remember the living knowledge within our communities, re-imagine through and beyond colonial narratives, and dream of worlds where our Peoples and communities are flourishing and thriving.

Art is a connector

It connects us to our individual experiences, to our shared experiences and differences. It connects us to our ancestors, to all our relations, to our stories, and to Creator.

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