Archive | March, 2011

Domestic Violence Awareness Day

20 Mar

by Emily Harris

On Saturday March 12th, I had the honor of attending the 5th Annual Domestic Violence Awareness Day at Valley State Prison for Women. The day was incredibly moving, full of lots of emotion, tears, laughter and many familiar faces. It was such an honor to be present to witness the powerful skits, music, dance, poetry, and testimony about domestic violence. One of the creative acts of resistance was the purple paper chain that the event organizers created that wrapped around the entire gymnasium. Each piece of paper had a quote such as “you are not alone”, “it is not your fault”, “break the silence” and as each speaker came to the stage they would breaking a chain off and read it out loud.

The event was organized by the Domestic Violence Peer Educators and attended by 400 women and transgender people at VSPW. The event planners invited outside guests to participate and speak at the event, in attendance this year were members of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, Justice Now, TGI Justice Project and CURB!!

Click here for more photos from TGIJP!

Below is an article from the Merced Sun-Star about the event:

Inmates at Chowchilla women’s prison address vicious cycle

By YESENIA AMARO
[email protected]

Camilla Russell was abused as a child. “I never talked about it,” she recalled. Not talking about it for years caused the tension inside of her to build up as anger.

NATION’S LARGEST EXHIBTION OF PRISON ART CELEBRATES 16 YEARS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

15 Mar

Image: Count Time by Alan Compo Norberg

The Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP) presents the presents the Sixteenth Annual Exhibition of Art by Michigan Prisoners. Running from March 22 – April 6, 2011, the show will be held at the Duderstadt Center Gallery on the University of Michigan North Campus at 2281 Bonisteel Boulevard. Over the past 16 years, this nationally recognized show has grown to be the largest exhibition of prisoner art in the country. This year’s exhibition will include more than 300 works of art by over 200 artists, shedding light on the talents to be found behind prison walls and encouraging the public to take a second look.

Free and open to the public, the exhibition and surrounding educational events raise awareness and inspire dialogue between the incarcerated and the community at large. The public is invited to an opening reception on March 22nd from 5:30 - 8 p.m. in the gallery. Formerly incarcerated artists who have now re-entered into the community will speak about what the show means to those in prison.

Participating artists express gratitude to organizers and gallery visitors alike, stressing the show’s impact on their lives and the community at large. “I believe that your program gives the public a glimpse into the type of things that inspire even the most downtrodden of us all” writes one artist. “When people see our work, for a few moments, they forget that this work was done by a felon, but by another human being. A human being who has the same thoughts, emotions, and inspirations as they do, and for that one moment, a major social and political barrier is shattered.”

Despite limited resources, exhibition artists create work in a rich range of styles, mediums, and themes. Visitors return to the show year after year to glimpse art that is remarkable for its originality, beauty, and sheer expressive power. Last year, over 4,000 people came to the exhibit. Organizers expect even higher attendance this year and an exciting array of new work.

This year’s exhibition, curated by Professors Buzz Alexander, Janie Paul, and Jason Wright, exhibits work from over thirty prisons throughout the state. The curators, PCAP Administrators La Shaun phoenix Moore, and Sari Adelson, along with various volunteers travel to these prisons to hand select the strongest work from the artists. As a result of this annual event, the amount of art created in Michigan prisons has increased dramatically, and Michigan prison artists have become national leaders, inspiring others to create art behind bars.

The exhibition is to be accompanied by the release of the 3rd Annual Literary Review of Creative Writing by Michigan Prisoners. Readings of works from the publication by formerly incarcerated individuals are set to take place both in Ann Arbor and in the Detroit area, and youth from Detroit will join us for a dialog about what’s on their minds, as they speak about their lives and their communities.

Schedule of Events

Tuesday, March 22
Opening Reception
Join the Prison Creative Arts Project as we celebrate the opening of the 16th 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 PM, Duderstadt Center Gallery, 2281 Bonisteel Blvd., Ann Arbor MI

Thursday, March 24
Keynote Address- Kathy Boudin
Join the Prison Creative Arts Project, join us as Kathy Boudin, Professor at Columbia University, delivers a keynote speech addressing the history of mass incarceration, the current incarceration crisis in the United States, and the directions that need to be taken to make a difference in a talk entitled, “Women and Men; Overcoming Dehumanization, Becoming Agents of Change”.
7:30-9:00 PM, Vandenberg Room, Michigan League, 911 N. University, Ann Arbor, MI

Saturday, March 26
Film Screening: All-Day
All-Day is a 3-D animation/experimental documentary video project, made in collaboration with Justin Gibson, who in 2000 was convicted of the murder of his grandmother and was sentenced to life at a Michigan State Correctional Facility. The project aims to tell his fictional interpretation of the story of his crime and ensuing incarceration.
3:00-5:00 PM, Room 3222 Angell Hall, 435 S. State Street, Ann Arbor MI

Sunday, March 27
Artist Panel
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.
3:00-5:00 PM Duderstadt Center Gallery, 2281 Bonisteel Blvd., Ann Arbor MI

Tuesday, March 29
Michigan Forecast: The New State Regime
Join us for a panel discussion about the challenges facing the Michigan Department of Corrections’ with a new governor and Republican officials in office. Panelists will include a representative from the American Friends Service Committee, a U of M Professor and two U of M graduate students.
7:30-9:00 PM, Michigan Room, Michigan League, 911 N. University, Ann Arbor, MI

Thursday, March 31
Families of the Incarcerated Panel – What Family and Home Really Mean
Join the Prison Creative Arts Project along with a panel returning citizens and family members of incarcerated artists discuss the transition of being home after being inside, the differences between prison families and their families at home and the idea of family reunification in this powerful event.
7:30-9:00 PM, Vandenberg Room, Michigan League, 911 N. University, Ann Arbor, MI

Monday, April 4
Anthology of Creative Writing by Michigan Prisoners Release Celebration
This anthology, titled I’ve Somehow Swallowed the Night, showcases poetry, short stories, and essays from extraordinary prison writers across the state of Michigan. At the celebration, we will have the honor of hearing many of the pieces featured in the book read by either the artists themselves or their families. We will have the opportunity to celebrate the phenomenal writing as well as our community of artists on the inside and out. The event is free and open to all.
7-9 pm, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Helmut Stern Auditorium, 525 South State Street Ann Arbor, MI

Wednesday, April 6
Closing Reception
5:30 – 8:00 PM, Duderstadt Center Gallery, 2281 Bonisteel Blvd., Ann Arbor MI

Exhibition hours are 10 a.m. - 7 p.m. Tuesday - Saturday, and 12 p.m. - 6 p.m. Sunday - Monday.

PCAP Poster ’11

The Restorative Revolution

11 Mar
This essay by Elaine Shpungin, Ph.D. was originally posted on 2/15/11 at http://www.improvecommunication.net/. We hope it will inspire some dialogue about the intersections of prison arts and restorative practices. Please share your thoughts.

Call me crazy - but I think we are ready for a Revolution.

I’m talking about a revolution in the way we approach justice, transgression, punishment, crime, and every day conflict among ordinary people. I am talking about the way we treat each other after we hurt each other - even in very deep ways - and the way we treat those who are less powerful than us when “justice” is placed in our hands.

I am talking a transformational, society-wide, lens-shifting, all-affecting revolution the scale of the 1960’s civil rights and women’s rights movements, a revolution in how we think about who we are and how we live, work, and love together.

Not a solution to everything. Not panacea, utopia, peace and love for all. But a fundamental shift in the collective understanding of what might be possible.

I feel it in my bones, like the rumble of a train coming down the tracks way before you see its lights appear from behind the bend.

People are sensing the heavy creaking of the current justice system, the way it is over-burdened and under-humane, the way it takes our sons and daughters and nieces and nephews and puts them back into our communities more hardened and less integrated than they were before, the way it creates rifts among us, decreasing rather than increasing the sense of safety for which we all long.

And people are becoming dissatisfied with the way we inadvertently replicate that same model in our homes, with people most precious to us, and in our communities, the places where we spend our waking hours.

I work with a lot of communication modalities and I have been talking to people about empathy and healing and dialogue for a long time.

But when I mention the restorative practices work in which I am involved, people respond with the kind of excitement, the kind of energy I have not seen before. Their eyes light up. They smile. They want to learn more. They want to get involved.

I am talking about people across all economic, class, age, and race differences: administrators working in the formal justice system and grandmothers of boys in the local jail, academics and activists, rabbis and conservative ministers, teachers and parents, college students and poets. When I share what might be possible, there is a spark, an electrical surge of hope.

And what is possible is a way of doing conflict and justice in which each voice and each side gets heard, in which people who have been hurt get to ask their toughest questions and those who have caused pain get to experience the impact of what they have done and come out feeling more human, not less. What is possible are solutions to conflicts that are not believable until you hear them, that stem from human creativity that is untapped by the current way we do things, and are agreed upon by everyone who is impacted by the conflict.

Restorative practices, as ancient as human society, have been making their way back into our collective knowledge. Some of them, like the Restorative Circles practice which I have been learning, are laced with a modern edge, an edge forged in the fires of inner-city Brazilian favelas where drugs, gun violence, racialized tensions and numbing poverty overlay the struggle for daily survival.

And that is what makes the possibility so palpable. There is another way and it works. It works to re-humanize people to each other in the most trying of circumstances across deeply etched lines. In a place where unbelievable beauty and unbelievable disparity go hand in hand, restorative practices are growing and being embraced by school districts, youth courts, youth prisons, neighborhoods and homes, presidential candidates and major news networks. Restorative Circles are winning awards and changing circumstances, changing lives, changing how people think about and live with conflict.

Not a solution to everything. Not panacea, utopia, peace and love for all. But a fundamental shift in the collective understanding of what might be possible.

A Restorative Revolution. It’s coming.

Wanna get on board?

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 4,916 other followers