I Dream Library

This month we had to close I Dream Library HQ for lack of funding, and the free digital library that serves thousands of students teachers and parents in over 50 countries is offline for the same reason. In the past I haven’t spoken about these moments, but this year …

Being a change maker has its seasons, and operating an education company critical of institutions who silence, ban and erase public dissent within their walls, is wildly unpopular in our home city of Vancouver CA that still needs 2SIQ/QTBIPoC to to be “grateful for the opportunities” to be heard + humanized.

So, having our own space to teach, create, and research is freedom. We thank you for those who visited and were a part of making art, education, and change with us at the library this past year.

If you believe in our work and our dream at this moment in history, then we ask you to contribute to our GoFundMe which has raised 15K+ toward our 250K goal over 18 months.

To add to this effort, we are fundraising through sales of items from our library and archives. It’s not what we want to do, but what we have to do to stay in service. And to release these pieces to people who value them will be the balm. STAY TUNED to our stories + here for more.

We welcome 2026 with an unapologetic commitment to a Dream of a Library that survives.

This holiday season we’re calling in 100 bookstores to gift $500 toward one of Canada’s most dynamic libraries amplifying 2SQTI/BIPoC stories.


❤️Get in touch / Give today @ the link in our bio
❤️Share + Tag a in the comments
❤️Help us reach our GoFundMe goal by December 31st
❤️Add your name to our Wall of Thanks

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I Dream Library is an award winning contemporary education platform creating access to diverse stories in schools, galleries and museums around the world. Founded in Vancouver, Canada in 2019 by Aisha Kiani and their son Rakim as a response to banned books, the organization’s first offering was a globally accessible digital archive and teaching resource for K-12 classrooms. Today, along with the digital library, our education center serves as a research and reference library supporting archival practice, workshops, exhibits, and community-building initiatives.

Building in public, with the public, shows the transformative power of libraries anywhere and everywhere. We believe the library is a cultural touchstone for liberation: a space where ideas are constantly being rediscovered, reimagined, and reinterpreted. In partnership with organizations and advocates, we amplify the role of libraries and archives in social justice movements, public education, and cultural (re)formation.

Recent library projects have been commissioned by, and exhibited in, the Vancouver Art Gallery, Museum of Vancouver, Arts Umbrella, Museum and Archives of North Vancouver, Richmond Art Gallery, Artspeak Gallery, Vancouver Public Library, CUPE BC, Bentall Gallery, and more. With your support we can continue offering self-directed and collaborative opportunities for critical education, creative exchange and collective imagination.

BLACK IS A COLOR

truly disappointing 2026 colour reveal & further description of space, serenity, imagination, and divergent thinking, and transformation as inherent to the color white, in an era of unapologetic “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (bell hooks)

I Dream Library response - 2026 colour of the year // CHROMATIC BLACK - primordial, cosmic, convergent, transformative, revolutionary

Reference and lineage of chromatic black in art history :

Shown here:

Slide 1 : Black Painting, 2003-2006,

Acrylic on fiberglass. 72 × 108 in. (182.9 × 274.3 cm). Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland Photo: Ron Amstutz Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland.

‘ “Black Painting” (2003-06), is dedicated to Fred Hampton, the former chairman of the Illinois branch of the Black Panther Party who was brutally murdered by police officers while his pregnant wife slept beside him. Hampton was only twenty-one years old. To bring global awareness to the brutality of the CPD’s actions, activists led ‘people tours’ of the crime scene. The tours of the apartment quickly revealed that there was no probable cause to illicit the excessive force. The officers were the only shooters and the victims were an unarmed sleeping man and woman.

In “Black Painting,” Marshall offers a night rendering of Hampton’s bedroom, a blue-black space subtlety illuminated by the white of posters and books. The piece is incredibly immersive; the heavy use of black forces viewers to adjust their eyes to see the details in the bedroom. A pyramid and copy of Angela Y. Davis’ autobiography rest on the nightstand. A Black Panther Party flag glows on the wall. The bare back of a woman arches towards the opposite side of the bed. No one else is visible.“ -

Slide 2 : Akua Njeri & | 1971

Slide 3 + 4 : Kerry James Marshall Interview: Paint it Black | 2014

Slide 5 : Cloud Dancer, Pantone 2026 color of the year

Slide 6 : American Progress, John Gast | 1872
Promotional artwork for US settler expansion as a natural right under ‘Manifest Destiny’.

Slide 7: Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison