What We Believe In.
Read about our mission as a nonprofit organization and view our official equity statement. We’re taking actionable steps to affect radical and lasting change.
- Our Story
- Our Programs
- Our Team
- Our Mission
Our Mission
The Cabin is a literary arts nonprofit organization in Boise, Idaho. We forge community through the voices of all readers, writers, and learners. Our workshops, readings, lectures, camps, and other literary programs provoke creativity and experimentation, foster literary excellence, and inspire a love of reading and writing in children and adults alike across the Treasure Valley and beyond.
Our Commitment to Equity
Black lives matter. Black stories matter. The thread of who is allowed to tell their story and who is listening is no small piece of our individual and shared history, in all its prejudice and privilege, pride and oppression. The Cabin and Idaho have been part of this history. We are committed to helping shape a different future, one in which all members of our community have the opportunity to tell and hear their stories, particularly Black communities, Indigenous communities, and all other historically marginalized communities and communities of color.
To Boise and our greater Idaho community:
In the midst of our shared pain and anger, we at The Cabin mourn the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, Tony McDade, Atatiana Jefferson, as well as the innumerable lives taken by the lie of white supremacy and the plague of racist violence. Black lives matter, still and always.
We know that merely expressing our horror, pain, and grief, and our support for equity and justice, is not enough.
It is The Cabin’s mission to serve all Idahoans, particularly historically marginalized and under-resourced communities. Our outreach has included a focus on economically-disadvantaged and incarcerated — populations wherein, unfortunately, BIPOC individuals are overrepresented. However, we know we still have much work to do, internally and externally. We know that we can, and we must, do better.
Many of us at The Cabin are writers and we believe in the power of showing rather than telling. To that end, we are committed to the following action items:
Staff & Board Training: The Cabin’s board and staff will take part in both unconscious and anti-racism training over the next year and invest in these important trainings on an annual basis.
Strategic Planning: We have formed a permanent committee, comprised of staff and board members, dedicated to finding and implementing ways in which we can become a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive arts organization, with steps built into our strategic planning documents. If we don’t know how to make this actionable, we’ll coordinate with organizations and individuals who do.
Audience & Program Development: We will take a critical look at our programs and the people we reach. It is our responsibility to partner with and redirect resources to Latinx, Indigenous, Black, refugee, LGBTQIA2S+, and other under-resourced readers and writers in our community, and to serve a greater percentage of those communities as we grow.
Leadership & Staff Recruitment: We will examine our process for recruiting and retaining teaching-writers and board members (our largest staff and leadership positions, respectively) to achieve representation that goes beyond merely reflecting our demographics, setting an example within our largely homogenous city and state.
Mission Revision: We will revisit and revise our core values statements to assure our commitment to justice, inclusion, and equity are as open and integral to our organization’s solvency as fundraising efforts and powerful books.
We don’t believe there’s a simple or quick solution if we are to truly change our organization. As Angela Davis recently said, “Diversity and inclusion without substantive change, without radical change, accomplishes nothing.”
We cannot do this work alone. In collaboration with our local partners and community members, we believe we can affect that radical and lasting change.
Thank you,
The Cabin
Some of our programs
