Calling all artists!

We are excited to launch an open competition for next month’s Prison Arts Coalition website banner image. The banner image will appear on each page of the website and in the online Gallery, and a detailed description of the image and the artist will appear on the homepage. This is an excellent opportunity for prison arts programs to highlight participants’ work and for emerging artists to call greater attention to work that addresses the US criminal justice system.

Submission Guidelines:

Digital images must be sent via electronic attachment to pacoalitionadmin@gmail.com by December 20, 2011. Images should be sent in JPEG or similar formats. Image size may vary, but all images will be reduced to 930 × 198 pixels for the banner image. There is no limit on the number of images that may be submitted.

Anyone may submit to this competition, including artists currently incarcerated in US prisons or other secure facilities. All entries from incarcerated artists must be joined by a completed consent form, detailing that the artist is knowingly submitting his or her work for the competition. Please consult each facility for specific consent guidelines, or visit our Consent Form page for more information and a sample form. Submissions of collaborative or group projects will also be accepted. 

Please note if you would like your entry to be included for consideration as a future banner image after the competition, or added to the online Gallery. 

Prize:

The winning entrant will receive a complimentary copy of Inside This Place, Not of It: Narratives from Women’s Prisons. Published last month by Voice of Witness, this edited collection by Ayelet Waldman and Robin Levi vividly recounts some of the most egregious human rights violations within U.S. women’s prisons through the stories of the women who have experienced them. The book represents collaborative work with Justice Now and includes a brilliant forward written by Michelle Alexander (professor, civil rights advocate, and author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness). Susan Straight (Take One Candle Light A Room) has said of Inside This Place, Not of It, “I will never forget these women, or this book.”

Founded by author Dave Eggers and physician/human rights scholar Lola Vollen, Voice of Witness is a nonprofit book series that depicts human rights crises around the world through the stories of the men and women who experience them. The Voice of Witness education program, in partnership with Facing History and Ourselves, aims to bring socially relevant, oral history-based curricula into schools throughout the U.S. The Prison Arts Coalition is very grateful for support from Voice of Witness and their kind offer to donate a book for this competition.