Dear friends,

Our team is grateful to our wonderful community for contributing to and engaging with JAC in so many ways over the last year, through some very challenging times. We’re excited to celebrate the launch of Maryland’s first multidisciplinary, distance learning arts program serving incarcerated women, CorrespondARTS, with all of our friends and supporters.

When COVID-19 began sweeping the country, shutting down visitations and programming in prisons nationwide, here at JAC we knew we had to push harder to maintain connections with artists inside. With our pARTner project and ArtLinks events in place online, enabling people on the outside to connect with the incarcerated artists in our network and engage with their creative work, we explored untapped possibilities to build even more bridges.

After much planning JAC formed a team of highly experienced, passionate local teaching artists who had lost their programs in prisons and jails as a result of the Covid lockdowns. Together with our Founding Director, they developed a 6 month pilot project, with activity packets offering prompts and lessons in theatre, visual art, creative writing, and poetry are being delivered every two weeks to the  Maryland Correctional Institution for Women, Each participant will receive feedback and reflections on the work they return to us. JAC is the organizing body for this project, but the creative control is in the hands of four fabulous teaching artists, Lori Pitts of Voices Unbarred, Schai Schairer of FIST DC, Carien Quiroga, and Leslie Bumstead.

CorrespondARTS is being funded in part through a grant awarded to us by the Maryland State Arts Council. We are grateful for this support and hope to be able to supplement our budget to help cover the costs of art supplies and printing and to adequately compensate our team members for their time and labor.

On this Giving Tuesday, a global day of giving, help us fund CorrespondARTS and reestablish opportunities for creative expression during this time of isolation and crisis. Please donate to our campaign so we can sustain this much-needed program!

• A $50 donation covers art supplies for 5 participants
• A $70 donation covers printing costs for 20 packets of art curriculum
• A $150 donation covers the full cost for 3 participants for 1 round (incl. printing, curriculum design, and supplies)
• A $500 donation covers the full cost for 10 participants for 1 round (incl. printing, curriculum design, and supplies)

“It is enough that our time with loved ones is taken from us in penalty. Our voices and hearts expression should have a continuum always, this is the essence of life and no one should be allowed to take that from any individual under any circumstances. So thank you so much for providing an outlet for this; it’s rewarding to me to have this form of expression, correspondence, communication. I sincerely hope this is reciprocated to you and the members of the Coalition committee who work to make this possible that they can continually feel their efforts are making a difference and receive a beneficial impact in their own lives as well.” –Cedar Annenkovna, artist

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for being a part of our vibrant community and supporting us in so many ways!

In peace, love, and solidarity,

The JAC team

What can you give this Giving Tuesday?

We are setting out to raise $10,000 to ensure the sustainability of CorrespondARTS. Please help us reach our goal!

Your donation through our fiscal sponsor, The William James Association, is 100% tax deductible.