Art & Liberation | Shine Bright School

Art is Liberation

A 21-Day Journey into Black Creative Brilliance. A slow, sensory immersion honoring Black artistry, lineage, imagination, emotional life, rest, and creative truth across the diaspora.

Delivery Window
February 10 to March 2
Investment
Included with Shine Bright School membership
Join as a member
Abstract artwork by Vaughn Spann
Courtesy the artist Monique Melton

Program Purpose

This offering recenters members in Black liberation through creativity, lineage, and imagination, while grounding the community in beauty and creative truth.

Recenter

Return to Black creativity as an anchor. Start the year with orientation, depth, and meaning.

Immerse

A slow, reflective experience across visual art, poetry, literature, music, and performance.

Recalibrate

Set a community tone rooted in embodied care, beauty, and a steady creative rhythm.

Daily Flow

Each day blends artistry with reflection and sensory grounding. You show up as you are. You move at a human pace.

1. Art to consider

A prompt-based invitation to notice or seek out Black creative work.

2. Sensory grounding invitation

Simple prompts using breath, touch, warmth, light, texture, or slow movement to help you land in your body.

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3. Reflection prompt

A grounded question aligned with the week’s theme. Built for journaling, quiet thinking, or voice notes.

4. Creative practice prompt

Gentle actions like drawing, collage, sound exploration, body-based creativity, stillness, or texture-led practice.

5. Pursue Black Liberation Challenge 

We invite you to explore the daily prompts of the Pursue Black Liberation challenge in addition to the daily invitations.

The experience is structured and nourishing, without demanding intensity or perfection.

Weekly Themes

Week 1: Recalibrate

Black art as grounding, orientation, and truth.

Week 2: Repair

Creativity as a space for healing and softness.

Week 3: Rejuvenate and Reclaim

Leaning into joy, imagination, and freedom.

Live Community Circles (2026)

Opening Circle
February 10. Welcome, grounding ritual, brief reading, and tone-setting led by Monique.

Closing Circle
March 2. Reflection, celebration, optional sharing, and closing gratitude.


Curation Commitments

Multidisciplinary, embodied, and experiential.Centering art created by women and femme artists across the Black diaspora.

  • U.S. Black
  • Afro-Caribbean
  • Afro-Latinx
  • African: West, East, South, diaspora
  • Afro-European

Reminder:
This is not therapy or replacement or substitute. The sensory grounding prompts are offered to encourage you to reclaim connection with your body, as this is often what we lose because of being socialized in hyper-individualistic, disconnected, and capitalistic societies. In doing these practices, you may notice discomfort and discomfort doesn’t mean unsafe, but can be an invitation for further support and nourishment. 


Art is Liberation is the annual February anchor ritual of Shine Bright School. Membership grants access to this experience each year.

Join as a member

FAQ

  • What is Art is Liberation?

    Art is Liberation is an evolution of the Pursue Black Liberation challenge. It centers Black Creative Brilliance as a restorative and life-giving practice within this work. This offering invites you to engage art as celebratory, rebellious, liberating, and joy-inducing. Art communicates what language often cannot. It reminds us that creativity itself is a form of liberation.

  • How is this different from previous challenges?

    This is not an add-on. It is a meaningful expansion. Art is Liberation intentionally centers art as the primary vessel for reflection, expression, and connection. The focus is on experience rather than completion, performance, or mastery.

  • How does this work?

    Each day opens with an invitation. We invite you to explore the daily prompts of the Pursue Black Liberation challenge. Participants are offered a piece of Black creative work to consider, or a prompt to seek out art that reflects shared experiences such as love, joy, grief, or rage, or that evokes those emotions personally. From there, each day includes a reflection prompt, a gentle creative invitation, and a simple sensory grounding practice. These elements are designed to be met with flexibility and care, using whatever time, tools, and capacity are available.

  • What does engaging with art look like in this experience?

    Each day you are invited to explore art in a way that feels affirming and accessible to you. You may create. You may reflect. You may observe. The invitation is to connect with art as an intimate exchange between you, the creative work, and the energy it brings forward.

  • How does this relate to the Pursue Black Liberation daily prompts?

    You are invited to explore the daily prompts of the Pursue Black Liberation challenge alongside the daily creative invitations offered here. Engagement is flexible. You may choose one, both, or alternate based on capacity.

  • What is the intention behind this experience?

    It’s not about a performance or perfection, but it’s about an experience. An intimate experience between you and art, and the energy you get to connect with by indulging into art.