Keeping Our Lights On
A six-month program for nourishing your creative life force in challenging times
In the shelter of each other, 2025 can be a year to practice creativity more deeply than we ever have.
“It is in the shelter of each other that the people live.” - Irish Proverb
2025 doesn’t have to be about coping. This year can be about flourishing creatively in a way you never have before. Not in spite of the circumstances, but because of them.
In this six-month creative community, Sara Saltee and Melissa West will show you how.
Keeping Our Lights On is about tending your creative spirit, unleashing your creative energies, and discovering what it means to approach living itself as a creative act, especially in dark times.
About the Keeping Our Lights On Program
This six-month experience combines inspiration, encouragement, and weekly support for nourishing your creative life.
Keeping Our Lights On weaves together:
juicy monthly themes
creative projects that guide inquiry into each theme
weekly online meet-ups and open studio time
daily practices for approaching all of life with a creator’s mindset
rich opportunities for reflection, conversation, and connection
Keeping Our Lights On is for you if you:
Enjoy all kinds of creative play
Feel determined to make 2025 a time of not holding back
Crave dedicated time and space to nurture a creative practice
Are ready to harness the power of an encouraging community to help you remain connected to your inner light
Keeping Our Lights On is for anyone determined to walk through 2025 grounded in the hopeful magic of creative practice in art and life.
Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving.
It doesn't matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times.
Come, yet again , come , come.– Rumi
Our 2025 Themes
Each month of Keeping Our Lights On is built around a different theme.
These themes inform our daily practices and monthly projects.
January
CONNECTING
Reclaiming the unbroken thread that connects you to your life force,
and creating a relational foundation for our work together
February
WELCOMING
Inviting all of who you are to the table and
creating welcoming space for your authentic, creative Self to flourish
March
ENCHANTING
Conconsciously applying mystery to everything
as we open to worlds that transcend the rational
April
TRANSMUTING
Engaging creativity as an alchemical force
for turning pain into meaning and challenge into joy
May
VENTURING
Stepping out of the comfortable known
engaging risk as a creative practice
June
MATTERING
Choosing to act as if we matter, as if what is meaningful to us matters,
as if what we devote ourselves to is essential to the well-being of ourselves and the world.
Creativity is a magic wand that works two ways. When you set it in action and seek to create something, it does not just bring into existence that object or work, it also raises in your heart a dream, a hope, and a will to achieve that creation. And when all else seems lost and steeped in hopelessness, the magic of creativity can still keep you going. For when all else seems dark, an urge to create something would still give you an aim to look forward to. And if you just take hold of this urge, it will take hold of you and see you through even the darkest times.
- Jyoti Arora, author in Ghaziabad, India
How the Program Flows
Weekly meet-ups happen online every Friday from 12 - 1:30 pm Pacific Time.
FIRST FRIDAY WORKSHOPS
12 - 1:30 pm Pacific Time
In first Friday workshops, we introduce and unpack the theme of the month
and share prompts for the month’s daily practice and creative project.
SECOND and THIRD FRIDAYS
12 - 12:45 pm: Connecting
We share experiences with the month’s daily practice and
test ideas about our creative projects.
12:45 - 1:30 pm: Studio Time
Open studio time for working on your creative projects
FOURTH FRIDAYS
12 - 1:30 pm
Sharing of creative projects and closing reflections on the monthly theme.
NOTES:
January is an abbreviated month with just two Friday meet-ups.
The month of May has five Fridays.
We’ll take a break during the “extra” week.
The way we live through the time of overwhelm is to learn rituals that center us and ground us, that connect us more directly and more strongly to the deep sense of self.
– Michael Meade
About Your Facilitators
The Keeping Our Lights On Program will be co-facilitated by friends and colleagues Sara Saltee and Melissa West. Since meeting in Sara’s Creative Constellations Program, Sara and Melissa have had a fantastic time together fomenting revolutionary change by helping creators of all kinds come home to their own creative life force.
Sara Saltee is a complex creator who helps creators of all kinds connect to their authentic impulses and make their highest contributions. She has been deeply immersed in the study and practice of creativity for more than 20 years as an assemblage artist, writer, teacher, adult learning specialist, curriculum designer, and certified creativity coach. Sara founded the Saltee Academy for Complex Creators in 2020 to share her original tools and frameworks and to create a welcoming community for complex creators with multiple creative passions.
Melissa West brings heart, humor, and an extraordinary range of perspectives to this program. As a neurospicy/highly sensitive artist, author, and depth psychotherapist/coach, she offers compassion and insight into the challenges of living and creating as an “other,” and powerful tools for finding deep acceptance and honoring of ourselves and our creative processes.
I can’t get enough of Sara’s unique perspective and delivery when it comes to creativity and incorporating the whole person. I’ve found her classes to be so nurturing and enlightening, and I want to take in more!
- Lauri M.
Early Bird Discounts
Available until December 20
Full fees for the Keeping Our Lights On six-month program are $150 per month.
You can pay in full or opt for a monthly payment plan.
The reduced prices below reflect the following early bird discounts:
save 20% or $30 per month on monthly payments
save 25% or $225 when you pay in full
Keeping Our Lights On: FIRST OF SIX MONTHLY PAYMENTS
Sale Price:$120.00 Original Price:$150.00
Quantity:
Sara’s courses have been hugely important to my transformation. Her work has really expanded my awareness of how I am creatively showing up in the world (and not just through artistic expression).
- Elizabeth C.
Program FAQ
Q: What if I can’t make all the meet-ups?
A: Don’t worry about it! While our community will be most vibrant with active participation by as many of us as possible, we’ve designed the program with a full understanding that our lives will inevitably fluctuate over the six months of our time together.
The First Friday workshops will always be recorded so you can get the new theme and new prompts via replay if you need to miss one.
The Second and Third Friday gatherings are divided into two segments, and you are free to come for one or both.
Q: What kinds of creative projects will we be doing?
Every month the project prompts will be different, and there will always be multiple options for how you might approach the project, so you’ll have lots of room to take each project in a direction that you’ll find engaging. For example, a prompt like “Turn something into something else” might become an opportunity to turn a childhood memory into a poem, or a set of teacups into a fountain, or a ruined painting into a collage. Or, a prompt like “Create something risky” might spur you to use an “ugly” color in a project, or write something about a vulnerable experience, or take a crack at using the oil pastels you’ve been scared to try. You always have the option to accept the prompt, adapt the prompt, or ignore it and work on a project of your own.
Q: What if I would rather just keep going on my own creative projects?
Go for it! On any given month, you should feel free to continue with projects you’ve already got underway instead of taking up the creative prompt we offer. You’ll still gain a lot from the daily practices, and the community support and reflections on the theme will undoubtedly bring fresh energy to your creative works-in-progress.
Q: Will everyone there be a great artist? Will I feel ashamed if I’m not?
Keeping Our Lights On is not at all concerned with making great art, or even making art at all if that’s not your jam. Instead, we are focused on understanding how we can engage our own creativity in whatever direction it moves us. We do creative projects because we want to practice activating our imaginations and experiencing play, not because we want to be great. We look to artists and writers (some of them great) to provide wisdom about what it means to be a creator, how we can live in ways that are aligned with our inner needs to create, and how we can bring a creative approach to all of life - including our work, our projects, our art, and our relationships. Whether you identify as an artist or a writer or neither, you will be at home here as long as you are intrigued by activating your creative spirit.
Q: Tell me more about how we’ll share our work - is this a critique group?
This is NOT a critique group, and you will not be asked to evaluate or assess each other’s creative products. Our emphasis will be on asking good questions that give us space to speak about our process and our relationship to our work. Sara and Melissa will provide tools at the beginning of the program to help you ask for the kind of feedback you actually want as a creator and we’ll all work to ensure that we are offering only comments that are welcome and helpful.
Got Other Questions? Contact Sara
The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.
- Mary Oliver
Pick the Plan that Works for You
Reduced rates are active until 12/20/2024
Keeping Our Lights On: FIRST OF SIX MONTHLY PAYMENTS
Sale Price:$120.00 Original Price:$150.00
Quantity: