We got the Healing Through the Arts and Nature grant!

We’re thrilled to share some exciting news—our organization has been selected as one of the 59 recipients of the Healing Through the Arts and Nature Grant from the Prebys Foundation! This generous support will allow us to expand our programs focused on enhancing mental, physical, and emotional well-being through creative initiatives for incarcerated populations. 

For years, Linda Litteral— a longtime resident artist who also serves as S4A’s board secretary —has volunteered time and materials to provide art classes for incarcerated people. Thanks to the grant, we received full funding to support Linda in a year-long healing-arts program for incarcerated populations at Las Colinas Detention & Reentry Facility and East Mesa Reentry Facility. We are grateful to partner with The Sheriff’s Department and California Lawyers for the Arts.

Over many years providing volunteer art classes at such facilities, Linda has witnessed firsthand how incarcerated people led through healing-art practices develop self-confidence, a positive self-view, and a sense of community. Linda offers a safe place to expose what has been hidden and put the abuse where it belongs, outside the participants’ bodies. Through this work, participants’ self-view shifts, growing more positive and powerful. Healing benefits also extend beyond inmates and their institutions to the families and communities to which they return.

“Art is an avenue of healing trauma and allows for a greater chance of success after the incarcerated students are released,” Linda explained. “Art gives them a visual voice in which to tell their story, which is a healing process in itself. It promotes higher self-confidence and creative problem-solving, and it increases the ability to make choices.”

Studies show at least 82 percent of Las Colinas’s incarcerated population has experienced sexual trauma, and East Mesa Reentry Facility’s incarcerated men suffer from high rates of sexual abuse as well. Linda’s lived experience as a sexual-abuse survivor and deep history as a teacher reveal that using art to address this trauma directly has a healing impact on affected populations. 

Finding and sharing one’s voice is an important part of the healing process. Sexual abuse silences the victim, and healing occurs through exposure. For example, the class “Expressing Trauma With Line,” part of the planned year-long programming, culminates in a metaphorical self-portrait. These self-portraits take many forms, but the consistent result is that the students can see themselves in a more positive light and feel pride in being able to communicate in a new way. 

Telling one’s story through artmaking is a powerful healing tool. Inmates’ well-being is directly impacted by the alignment of mind, body, and soul for self-expression— the mind to learn, body to make art, and soul for self-revelation through art. This cohesion of all parts of self is powerful, offering students tools to generate their own healing. As Linda noted, “Perhaps if we could stop sexual abuse, we could do away with prisons.” 

That’s just the kind of ambitious creative action that moved Prebys Foundation CEO Grant Oliphant and his colleagues to invest so heavily in the $5.2 million initiative.

“These grantees exemplify the transformative power of creativity and the natural world in fostering healing and well-being,” Oliphant said. “Their innovative projects not only enrich our communities but also provide vital pathways to recovery and resilience. We look forward to the profound impact their work will have on individuals and society as a whole."