Living Legacy Pilgrimage · 2026
A Pilgrimage for ArtistsThe Alabama
Story
Four days in the places where history was made — seen through the eyes of a creative practitioner.
October 19–22, 2026 · Birmingham · Montgomery · Selma
Artists have always been witnesses. This pilgrimage is built for those who carry a creative practice — and who want to bring it into direct encounter with the civil rights story of Alabama.
Over four days, you'll move from Birmingham to Montgomery to Selma alongside fellow artists — writers, visual artists, photographers, musicians, performers, educators — each bringing your own lens to the same ground. The sites are the same ones that shaped the movement. What shifts is the depth of attention you bring to them, and the community you process them with.
This isn't a tour for artists. It's a pilgrimage that takes seriously what artists do: observe, sit with difficulty, make meaning from what they see. You'll return with more than photographs and notes. You'll return changed by what you've stood in front of.
Creative practitioners have a particular way of seeing. This pilgrimage creates space to engage history through your discipline — not just as a passive observer, but as someone making meaning from what you encounter.
Traveling alongside fellow artists changes the conversation. What you notice, question, and carry out of each site is shaped by who you process it with. This pilgrimage draws people who create — and who know that creating is a form of reckoning.
The Edmund Pettus Bridge. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice. Kelly Ingram Park. These places do something to you that research cannot. The Alabama landscape is the text. Your practice is how you read it.
What you'll
encounter
A selection of sites from the full four-day itinerary
Designed by MASS Design Group, this six-acre memorial to more than 4,400 victims of racial terror lynching is itself a work of art in dialogue with history — and one of the most powerful spaces for a creative practitioner to inhabit.
You walk across it yourself. The bridge where Bloody Sunday unfolded on March 7, 1965 — a structure so freighted with meaning that standing on it is a different experience from reading about it or seeing it photographed.
Built on the site of a former Montgomery warehouse where enslaved people were held, the museum uses installation, sculpture, and narrative to trace the line from slavery to the present — a model of what art in service of truth can do.
The institute holds one of the most thorough documentary collections of the Birmingham movement. Kelly Ingram Park — where fire hoses were turned on demonstrators in 1963 — sits across the street, anchored by sculptures memorializing the courage it took to stay in the street.
Four days.
Three nights.
Alabama through an artist's eyes.
- October 19–22, 2026
- Birmingham to Montgomery to Selma, following the historic march corridor
- Hotel accommodations throughout
- Breakfast daily; most lunches and dinners included
- Private bus transportation and professional tour manager
- All site admissions and program fees included
- Open to artists and creative practitioners of all disciplines
- Individuals and groups welcome
- Scholarships available to support access
Pricing by
occupancy
All rates are per person and include accommodations, meals, transportation, and all site admissions. Sharing a room brings the cost down significantly — triple occupancy is available for groups traveling together.
A pilgrimage is not a vacation; it is a transformational journey during which significant change takes place. New insights are given. Deeper understanding is attained. On return, life is seen with different eyes. Nothing will ever be quite the same again.
Living Legacy Project
Join us in October
Pre-registration is open. Space is limited.
Pre-Register Now Questions? [email protected]