FIGMENT draws its inspiration from other community-based arts events. We have created 10 principles that guide the development, production, and experience of FIGMENT:

PARTICIPATION
We are committed to the spirit of participation. We believe that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through the medium of deeply personal participation. We achieve being through doing. Everyone is invited to work. Everyone is invited to play.

DECOMMODIFICATION
We seek to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.

INCLUSION
Anyone may be a part of FIGMENT. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.

SELF-EXPRESSION
Self-expression arises from the unique gifts of the individual. No one other than the individual or a collaborating group can determine its content. It is offered as a gift to others. In this spirit, the giver should respect the rights and liberties of the recipient.

SELF-RELIANCE
FIGMENT encourages the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources.

GIVING
FIGMENT is devoted to acts of gift giving and volunteering. The value of a gift is unconditional. Gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value.

COMMUNAL EFFORT
We value creative cooperation and collaboration. We strive to produce, promote and protect social networks, public spaces, works of art, and methods of communication that support such interaction.

CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY
We value civil society. Each participant in FIGMENT is responsible for helping to create a civil environment for all other participants. We will endeavor to produce this event in a way that fosters a civil society and that is socially responsible.

LEAVE NO TRACE
Our community respects the environment. We are committed to leaving no physical trace of our activities wherever we gather. We clean up after ourselves to leave each place in a better state than we found it.

IMMEDIACY
Immediate experience is, in many ways, the most important touchstone of value in our culture. We seek to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves, the reality of those around us, participation in society, and contact with a natural world exceeding human powers. No idea can substitute for this experience.