Building upon a new level of cultural awareness regarding the benefits of arts in corrections programs, we would like to know if an expanded national organization would be a valuable asset to you and the work you do.
In these early stages, we feel the association could offer the following to its members:
Raise awareness of programmatic efficacy
Host national or regional conferences
Share best practices
Foster community
Support, collect and disseminate relevant research
Offer professional development opportunities
What else can you imagine?
The following 5-minute survey is designed to help better understand the need for a national prison arts association and how it can best serve potential members like you. Your input is incredibly valuable during this early stage.
By Heart: Poetry, Prison, and Two Lives — a two-person memoir written by Judith Tannenbaum and Spoon Jackson — will be out in April 2010. You can read more about the book here (and sign up to be notified when the book is available).
For 14th Annual Exhibition press release see this post.
Tuesday, March 24 Opening Reception
Join the Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP) as we celebrate the opening of the 14th Annual Exhibition of Art by Michigan Prisoners. Formerly incarcerated artists, and Curators Buzz Alexander, Janie Paul, and Jason Wright, will address visitors to the gallery at 6:15 p.m. Free and open to the public.
5:30 – 8:00 p.m., Duderstadt Center Gallery, 2281 Bonisteel Blvd., Ann Arbor, MI
Wednesday, March 25
Bill Ayers Join us as Bill Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois and Chicago Citizen of the Year, talks about the role of the arts, education, and activism in shaping our collective destinies. Bill Ayers is the author of several books on education and social justice and is the founder of Chicago’s Small Schools Workshop and the Center for Youth and Society.
7:30 p.m., Rackham Amphitheatre, 915 E. Washington St. Ann Arbor, MI
Thursday, March 26 The Michigan Review of Prisoner Creative Writing: Book Release and Celebration
PCAP and the 14th Annual Exhibition of Prisoner Art present an evening in celebration of PCAP’s first ever Michigan Review of Prisoner Creative Writing. Join us with guest editor and prisoner writing advocate and teacher Joseph Bathanti to enjoy selections of the beautiful and unabashed poetry, prose, and fiction of Michigan’s incarcerated writers. We come together on March 26th to celebrate and honor the talent and vison of these hidden voices with readings by recently released writers whose work has been featured.
7:00pm, Anderson Room, Michigan Union, 530 S. State St. Ann Arbor, MI
Friday, March 27 The Art of Social Change
Malaquias Montoya, a Professor at the University of California, Davis and renown Chicano artist, will present his latest exhibit, “Premeditated: Meditations on Capital Punishment.” This exhibit was inspired by Malaquias’s longstanding commitment to speaking out on behalf of those who are disadvantaged and oftentimes silenced by society. His art reveals the underlying racial and class injustices that are carried out through state sponsored execution, and his images are purposefully graphic so as to awaken audiences from their anesthetized response to capital punishment. In all of his work Malaquias sees it has his responsibility to comment on the culture of his time and create social change through art.
7:30 p.m., Henderson Room, Michigan League, 911 N. University Ave. Ann Arbor, MI
Saturday, March 28 Youth Speak
Please join us as a group of Detroit youth come together to discuss serious issues of urban living. It will be a facilitated dialogue with these bright young leaders about the challenges they face, and then an open discussion with all in attendance about these same challenges.
2:00 p.m., Room D, Michigan League, 911. N. University Ave. Ann Arbor, MI
Sunday, March 29 Artists Talkback Join us as a panel of formerly incarcerated artists discuss works in this year’s show and the process of creating art behind bars. The event is moderated by U of M’s School of Art and Design Professor, Janie Paul.
3-5 PM Duderstadt Center Gallery, 2281 Bonisteel Blvd., Ann Arbor MI
Wednesday, April 1 Tough Choices: A Look at the Complexities of the Michigan Parole and Commutation Board Join us for a conversation about the process by which the Michigan Parole and Commutation Board reach decisions determining whether a prisoner is ready to return to society.
4:00 p.m., Anderson Room A/B, Michigan Union, 530 S. State St. Ann Arbor, MI
Monday, April 6 Invisible Women: The Crisis of Incarcerated Mothers
Silja Talvi, investigative journalist, and author of Women Behind Bars: The Crisis of Women in the US Prison System, and Melissa Radcliff, Executive Director of Our Children’s Place, a residential initiative allowing young children to live with their incarcerated mothers, join us to discuss the intersections of incarceration and motherhood.
7:30pm, Rackham Assembly Hall, 915 E. Washington St., Ann Arbor, MI
Wednesday, April 8, 2009 Closing Reception
5:30 – 8:00 p.m., Duderstadt Center Gallery, 2281 Bonisteel Blvd., Ann Arbor
The Judy Dworin Performance Project is moving into its 4th year of residency work at York Correctional Institution for women in Niantic, CT. There has been tremendous growth in the women we have worked with at York in self-confidence and self esteem; in their ability to work as a group; in their ability to express themselves and communicate with others; and in adding a creative dimension to their lives that is healing and growth producing. Through this work we have begun to outreach to some of the families of the incarcerated and we have seen what an important bridge the arts can provide between family members inside and outside the razor wire. Children have reconnected with their mothers, parents have seen their incarcerated children’s growth, and family members have expressed pride in their incarcerated relatives accomplishments.
Our 2008 residency focused on the women’s dreams and dream aspirations, and began with a special performance of JDPP’s most recent premiere, The Witching Hour, a performance piece that looks at 17th century Connecticut women who were accused and prosecuted as witches. The piece was extremely well-received by the women and gave the 34 women who became part of the Dreamings project a way to see how costumes, visual elements, text and music can be combined in a performance piece that speaks to history, gender and issues of social justice.
The six-month residency culminated in a performance piece that integrated text, poetry, dance and, for the first time, scenic elements. Dreamings became a piece that spoke to not only the incarcerated but to all people, about their dreams, dream aspirations and common humanity. The results demonstrated a sophistication that went far beyond previous years. The progress this year was a testament to the value of continuing year-to-year residencies. And the women’s participation in other arts residencies at the prison also builds a foundational knowledge that they can apply to other arts projects.
A crowning achievement is that we received permission to purchase t-shirts of different rainbow colors depicting each group, (the dancers, singers, and performers) with a common design created by one of the women printed on the front of each one. The women wore these as “costumes” for each performance and we were able to then mail the t-shirts to designated family members after the performance. The opportunity to wear these t-shirt was transformative for the women– as one inmate said, “Putting on the shirts we were like free for a while. It is something I will never forget,” And one more notable step was that a families performance was allowed to take place on the last performance day in the evening, in the gym. An audience of about 70 people attended the families performance. One inmate, a youthful offender, described, “My mom has never seen me do anything like this,” and she continued to say of the project, “It motivated me. I haven’t been in seg in one month or gotten a ticket. I couldn’t go a week before.”
The York performances were seen by over 200 inmates at York who received the performance with standing ovations, cheers and energized talkbacks. As one inmate exclaimed in the talkback after the performance, “This is what it really means to be free on the inside. You guys are awesome and right now I feel free on the inside.”
We will be taking the Dreamings project out to the public on April 2, 3, 4, 2009 at Charter Oak Cultural Center in Hartford, CT. Joining the Judy Dworin Performance Ensemble and Women of the Cross in this further development of the piece will be formerly incarcerated women and daughters of incarcerated women at York.
Our fourth Moving Matters! residency for women at York CI entitled “What I Want to Say” will begin this coming spring. In this project we plan to continue to build on the artistic and deep personal growth of the York women and further a positive dialogue with the participating women and family members. We plan to create a piece using text, movement, song and visual images to portray stories, thoughts and reflections of the women to an especially important person in their lives. The question that we are presenting to them is, “If you had only one story to tell that person, what would you want to say?”
Concurrently, we will be working with 20 York mothers and their Hartford-based children in a project in collaboration with Families in Crisis and Central Connecticut State University on the same theme. If possible, we hope to have some collaborative sharing between the two groups. We will work with the York mothers and their children, on a way to express a message to their mother or child through dance, song, poetry or the other art forms. Through a series of exercises and explorations in movement, writing, song and drawing, we will help to shape these communications in the classes for a culminating day of sharing at the prison. On the final day, in the morning the children and the mothers will share their pieces with each other. We will then work the separate pieces into a collaborative performance piece that will be shared as a culminating performance for an invited audience of inmates, staff and outside guests.
JDPP inc. throughout its almost twenty years, has created residency programs that time and again demonstrate how the arts can be a powerful agent of change, growth and healing. Our work at York has been one of the most striking examples of the transformative possibilities of the arts.
The Insight Project is a comprehensive theatre-making class offered by the Court Employment Project (CEP), an alternative-to-incarceration program addressing the needs of court-involved youth at CASES. Following the success of the company’s first and second cycle productions of the original plays Bird’s Eye View and Brazil at Theatre Row Studios on 42nd Street, the Insight Project will focus its next cycle on bringing these productions into the community.
Bird’s Eye View raises challenging questions about becoming an adult while negotiating family loyalty, ethical and legal behavior. Brazil explores the impact of a single act of violence and the struggles of those affected to make sense of the incident. Both scripts are original pieces, written in the course of the Insight Project’s work by the participants and Writer-in-Residence Todd Pate, and inspired by the participants’ life experiences.
The Insight Project’s third cycle will bring project alumni together with professional actors and new CEP participants to revive these two powerful performances as a repertory company. Our goal is to use these performances to engage communities in a conversation on the underlying issues of offending behavior and a dialogue on the value of community-based alternatives to incarceration. Accordingly, performances will be accompanied by a curriculum guide for interested high school and undergraduate institutions, and will be followed in all cases by a talkback, in which audiences will engage directly with performers about the play’s content and their individual perspectives on these issues.
Institutions interested in hosting a performance of Bird’s Eye View or Brazil in May or June of 2009 should contact Insight Project Director Dan Stageman. There is no charge for the performance – an appropriate venue (with minimal production values) and an engaged audience are the only requirements. Performance scripts and curriculum guides are available upon request.
