Linda McRae set up her equipment in a bare cement room, the kind built for containment, not concerts.
Once she was ready, she was escorted to the guard station. Here, she watched as eight men were brought in one by one, chained and handcuffed, and led into individual cages just big enough for a stainless steel stool.
It was weird at first, like stepping into something that had only ever been a television construct, Linda recalls.
But within 15 minutes, it started to feel normal. It was as if the cages had disappeared and all that was left was the music.
“I really believe that arts and music can have a therapeutic, redemption-like quality,” she said.
What started as a performance nearly 15 years ago has turned into something much bigger.
“It’s been an incredible blessing that led to this whole other avenue of teaching songwriting at festivals and arts organizations,” said Linda, former member of Spirit of the West. “I never ever dreamt I’d be doing anything like this, ever.”
Beyond traditional stages, artists are building community and restorative justice programs, where music becomes less about ticket sales and more about connection, collaboration and purpose.
A class turns into a collaboration
For Linda, that shift began after she started volunteering with the arts in corrections program at New Folsom Prison in California, where she ran writing workshops.
It became a gig she didn’t expect to fall in love with so deeply. “We were met with such amazing gratitude and respect we thought, wow, we want to take this further,” said Linda.
She has since sought out other opportunities for mentoring through teaching at the Songwriter Soiree music campus.
“I really feel like it’s kind of giving back for some of what I have been given as a musician and artist,” she said.
In one workshop at Folsom, Linda remembers reading the most beautiful poem written by one of the inmates, Ken Blackburn. He wrote about his childhood memories and what he misses about where he grew up in the Appalachian Mountain region.
Linda then put it to music and recorded it.
Moments like that turned the workshops into spaces for collaboration and healing. “You’re helping them see a way forward,” Linda said. “It’s mentorship, it’s collaboration, and it’s humanitarian too.”
What Linda stumbled into has become, for artists like Hugh Chris Brown, part of a more intentional redefinition of musical advocacy.
In Kingston, Ont., Chris runs the Pros and Cons program, which has been working inside five penitentiaries since 2010. The iniative produces albums and supplies instruments that have supported restorative justice for over 1,000 participants.
Chris brings mentors, instruments and recording equipment behind bars, helping inmates build relationships and skills through singing, writing, arranging and recording. The program has produced multiple albums with anonymous participants from the Grand Valley Institution for Women and the Joyceville Institution.
One of the first participants, Lloyd Ingraham, showed up early to every session, helping set up chairs before the workshops began. Around the time of his release, the program began receiving media attention, and Ingraham did an interview.
That same day, Chris got a message from Lloyd’s son, Jason. “Can you tell him that his four children, 10 grandchildren and granddaughter can’t wait to be with him?” the message read.
Amazed, Chris offered to send Jason the tracks that his dad had sung on, given that, to protect privacy, each song is anonymous.
But Jason already knew which songs were his father’s. He recognized his voice.
Industry pressures
A few months later, Chris received a photograph of Lloyd at his parents’ grave, surrounded by his children and grandchildren.
“Seeing how deeply the music impacts people’s relationships with themselves and to each other, I realized what an impact music has had on my life,” said Chris.
The program started as a way to end stigma against incarcerated people. Now, 13 years later, it is a national charity that has reshaped his understanding of music. “It has challenged my capacity to love and see beyond judgement which has deepened my relationship to myself and my music,” Chris said.
Tens of thousands of talented people trying to earn a living from their art are being squeezed out of the music industry by rising economic pressures, said a recent Ontario Creates report that explored the economic potential of Canada’s music industry.
“The music industry often frames success around visibility, numbers and recognition,” said Cindy Doire, musician and psychotherapist.
“The reality is most working musicians sustain themselves through a patchwork of gigs, teaching and side jobs yet they keep making music because music carries meaning beyond the metrics.”
It’s exhausting, and unsustainable, to stay caught up in the hustle, she explained.
‘It’s not about serving an industry purpose’
Community-engaged work offers something different.
It brings it back to the heart, to the authenticity of making music, said Cindy. She has been running wellness rooms at Folk Canada conferences for almost five years now, opening up conversations about purpose, sustainability, and the role of community in music-making.
“People can feel really lost or depleted at those conferences,” said Cindy. Cultivating a space for artists to unpack the burnout they feel in a difficult industry can create a little sustainability for artists, she explained.
“It’s not about serving an industry purpose,” said Cindy. “It becomes about music by the people for the people and that’s a really beautiful, vulnerable, creative process.”
As a solo artist, “it started to feel self-indulgent and that was really hard for me,” said Cindy.
Now, she runs Chorus of Courage, a community-led music initiative, that has led her work into a more collaborative space for connection, meaning and healing. “It takes us out of the hustle,” she said.
In an industry increasingly defined by algorithms and streaming royalties, these programs offer something the traditional marketplace often cannot.
For Chris, it’s been his time surrounded by inmates that reconnected him to music and meaning in a new way. “It really helps you understand what music is when you see its reception in a place where the present tense is so harsh and you bring something that makes the present tense attractive,” said Chris. “You realize what a gift and emotional platform music is.”
For artists like Linda, Chris and Cindy, the shift isn’t about abandoning music as a livelihood. It’s about reclaiming music as a relationship.
In prison classrooms and conference halls, they are finding sustainability in something harder to measure. “What matters is that people feel seen,” said Cindy. “There is so much medicine in songs and art in general.”
