The Prison Arts Coalition

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 [email protected] 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.

Ria Fay-Berquist is a by-product of late 1970’s San Francisco, a narrative and documentary filmmaker, and a former media literacy teacher for young women in the Chicago public schools. She holds a BFA in Film, Video, and New Media from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and now makes Los Angeles her home. She was interviewed by Sherifa C. Fuller.

THE PRISONER is a short film about imprisonment. It is currently in its final hours of a campaign to raise festivals funds on IndieGoGo.

The film follows a female visitor as she reenters a prison to see an inmate she met during her work as a corrections officer. Its genesis came during a non-contact visit between the filmmaker, Ria Fay-Berquist, her sister, and a family friend incarcerated in Pelican Bay State Prison in 2008. During the visit, a riot broke out. The signs and implications that were so obvious to the inmates on one side of the glass were lost on the visitors. As they were escorted off the grounds so prison personnel could respond to the situation, there was no evidence of what was happening beyond the walls.

The film highlights the stark contrast between different people involved in the prison system and how they experience it. It aims to humanize the prison experience by examining how imprisonment can be psychological as well as physical.

SCF: The Prisoner is a very open film that doesn’t clearly promote or condemn any of the parties. Why did you choose to make it this way?

RFB: I wanted to create a space for people to insert themselves in the story, or inject their own experiences. Also, rather than making characters that fit into a good and evil binary, I wanted to show people as contradictory and complex, battling with their roles and innate desires. People’s impulses can get subverted within a system, be it government, school, work, or prison, but people will revert to type in unguarded moments.

SCF: Did the actors engage in any special training to get ready for the parts?

RFB: Yes. The rehearsal process was drawn from Stanford Prison Experiment, a landmark study at Stanford University 40 years ago. Dr. Philip Zimbardo, a professor of psychology, ran an experiment on power where a dozen Stanford student volunteers were randomly assigned roles as inmates and corrections officers in a mock prison on Stanford’s campus. The experiment was stopped after six days because students had so completely absorbed their roles that violence had erupted within the ‘prison administration’ and those selected as inmates began to believe they were truly incarcerated. This incident was at the top of my mind as I read up on creating power dynamics between people. I set up one big rehearsal for the cast with inmates, officers, and visitors.

On the day of the rehearsal, I told those playing officers that they could set all the rules for the inmates - how they should behave and what movements they could make. I had had rehearsals with just the officer players previously, and we had taken a trip to San Quentin State Prison to prepare. I knew them to be very warmhearted, kind people, so I was amazed at the really powerful boundaries they created after consulting privately amongst themselves in rehearsal. When they came back, they told the inmate players to remove their shoelaces, turn over their cell phones, watches, any sharp objects… they had even decided when inmates were allowed to talk and who they were allowed to talk to. Those playing officers had basically stripped the inmate actors of any ability to protect themselves or communicate with others. It was really powerful to watch.

The effect was really remarkable. Those playing inmates complied without any real resistance, and you could see them begin to slouch and draw into themselves while the corrections officer actors seemed to grow bigger and stand taller. Those playing visitors, whom I had told could stand around the sides and watch but weren’t allowed to interfere, began interacting less and less. It was a very memorable experience to witness.

SCF: Do you personally deal with walls and barriers in your life, or are you an outsider telling the story?

RFB: Everyone encounters walls and barriers. I think it’s interesting how we internalize barriers whether, whether they are physically concrete, or are belief systems we’ve inherited from family and community. Many of our most debilitating limitations are mental, in terms of what we believe is possible. Unless we change our mindset, we can never break out of that mold. It’s interesting how we hold ourselves back in these ways. This is not to say that there aren’t real barriers in life that are exclusionary in a very real way. I’ve experienced both. But our perception is an enemy we cannot fight if we don’t see it hovering.

SCF: What do you hope people take away from the film?

RFB: I hope relationships between characters will interest them. I ultimately hope that they understand the implicit riddle which is who, of the many characters in the film, are the true prisoners.

SCF: Where can THE PRISONER be found?

RFB: Coming soon to festivals, we hope. In the interim, there are a lot of ways that people can follow and support the film. First, they can check out our IndieGoGo site. They can also:

➢ Like THE PRISONER on Facebook

➢ Follow the film on Twitter

➢ Tweet about the film (@prizefightfilms)

➢ Share the campaign with the IGG widget in an email, or on their blog or website

➢ Tell their friends!

Thousand Kites is a community-based performance, web, video and radio project centered on the United States prison system. Based in Whitesburg, Kentucky, Thousand Kites can be reached at [email protected].

Thousand Kites needs your help to produce “Calls from Home,” a special radio project that connects prisoners to their families. With your support we are going to send voices through prison walls and over barbed-wire to the millions of our neighbors behind bars this holiday season.

Sing a song, read a prayer, speak from the heart and let those inside know you are thinking about them. Call in a holiday wish now at 877-410-4863 to our toll-free 24/7 answering machine.

In the U.S., we have a nation inside our nation. Children and family members are separated from their loved ones. Corporations make millions of dollars from their phone calls, these are profits collected from our most vulnerable families.

Visit our website to help spread the word and get important updates as we build this national effort.

One part media project and one part hustle, we will build “Calls from Home” together. Please contact our team if you have any questions or ideas.

Alex Moroz is the founder and director of the Champaign County Juvenile Detention Center Arts Project in Illinois. Please contact Alex at [email protected] if you want to learn more, and visit the program website at www.ccjdcartsproject.weebly.com.

Hello prison arts educators! I am the founder and director of the Champaign County Juvenile Detention Center Arts Project, and I’d like to share our new program with you. Currently, we teach music to incarcerated youth, though we are in the process of expanding to include other arts disciplines, as well. We are a unique group because all of our teachers are students at the University of Illinois, and we attract other students, professors, and community organizations to help us create meaningful experiences for our students.

Our organization began in early September after I taught music to incarcerated men through my first program at the Decatur Adult Transition Center in Decatur, IL. My experiences with at the Decatur ATC inspired me to create a new program to reach out to incarcerated youth and give other college students the opportunity to teach in a correctional facility. Since then, our program has been a huge success with a 100% participation rate, and I’m excited to see where it will take us.

Our Model

We structure our classes similar to a Catholic Mass. Masses are made of two parts: the Ordinary and the Proper. The content of the Ordinary is consistent in each mass, and the content of the Proper changes, depending on the seasons. In our music classes, our “Ordinary” consists of learning, performing, and analyzing popular songs on instruments and voices with a preconceived plan, and our “Proper” consists of various composition activities in which our main plan is to see where our minds can take us. By designing our classes this way, we a) give our new students a structured environment to facilitate participation and learning b) give our returning students elements of both consistency and surprise, and c) foster creativity and independent thought by allowing our students to steer our class’s direction during discussions and composition activities.

Our Latest Project

In this post, I’d like to share our latest composition project. Over two weeks, our students wrote a rap in collaboration with our teachers and CCJDC faculty members. To do so, our students selected a topic and a mood to communicate, and then they shared their ideas aloud while we offered suggestions for improvement. They chose to write about JDC, but to “make it funny” and “keep it light.” After we wrote a chorus, verses, and a contrasting section, our students designed the overall form of the rap, which they learned how to do through our “Ordinary” activities of analyzing song forms.

These are the lyrics that they came up with in the form that they chose (ABABCBAC):

JDC

CCJDC Arts Project

JDC is not the place to be

Just stay at home, and you can watch TV

Don’t commit the crime, or you’ll serve the time

And if you eat the goose, it’ll taste like slime.

At JDC you get your trays in your room

During hygiene, you sweep your room with the broom

They come knockin’ on your door, talking ‘bout breakfast

When you open your bag, it look real hectic

And that’s what happens in the morning at JDC.

JDC is not the place to be

Just stay at home, and you can watch TV

Don’t commit the crime, or you’ll serve the time

And if you eat the goose, it’ll taste like slime.

We always play knockout and volleyball

Don’t forget about shootout, that’s the best of them all

When we start the stretches, we be doin’ up-downs

Runnin’ them laps, lookin’ like clowns.

JDC, JDC, Hey!

JDC, JDC, Hey!

JDC, JDC, Hey!

JDC, JDC, Hey!

Participate, cooperate, make your sure room look straight

Get more tokens, get more food on your plate

Do the best you can, so when you go to court

You got a better chance to get a good report.

JDC is not the place to be

Just stay at home, and you can watch TV

Don’t commit the crime, or you’ll serve the time

And if you eat the goose, it’ll taste like slime.

JDC, JDC, Hey!

JDC, JDC, Hey!

JDC, JDC, Hey!

JDC, JDC, Hey!

CCJDC Arts Project teacher Corinne Jones and I took the lyrics home, recorded it on Garage Band, put it on YouTube, and played it for our students on the faculty computers the following week. Our students thought that our recording was the coolest thing ever, and it gave them a sense of accomplishment—especially because in this day and age, musical works are only official when they’re posted on YouTube (much like how relationships are only official when Facebook says so).

I should mention that “if you eat the goose, it’ll taste like slime” refers to one of their not so delicious meals. At least it gave them something to write and laugh about.

If you are interested to screen the movie at a location near you, please contact Tobias Janson at [email protected] for more details. The film will premiere in Sweden on November 25, 2011. To keep up with the latest updates on Facebook, please click here.

This competition is sponsored by Play’s the Thing: Creative Approaches to Wellbeing, an international conference in London, UK. Entry is encouraged and open to people in prison, with a particular prize for the best entry from a serving prisoner.

Fancy the chance to unleash your imagination and share a postcard of your own creation with thousands of people around the world? Want to be part of what could become the largest online collection of individually
created postcards celebrating the theme of Wellbeing?

Great, then put your idea on to a postcard and submit it to our online gallery by sending it to:

A Great Day Looks Like..
c/o Escape Artists
Studio 24
7-15 Greatorex Street
London E1 5NF
United Kingdom

How will you and your work be represented?

Postcards will be exhibited in a postcard exhibition at the Play’s the Thing Conference in London. They will also be displayed in the online exhibition at www.playsthething.org.uk . Play’s the Thing reserves the right not to display a postcard if is deemed to be inappropriate.

Are there any prizes?

Yes. The postcards will be judged by delegates at the Play’s the Thing conference. The card with the most votes will receive an Amazon.com gift certificate to the value of £30. The runner up will receive an Amazon.com gift certificate to the value of £20. Both winners will also receive a signed copy of Pat Kane’s ‘The Play Ethic’.

For serving prisoners who enter the competition there will be a special prize for the best entry. See Prison Arts - Postcard Competition for full details.

Explore an ever growing digital journey.

Every new postcard received for the ’A Great Day Looks Like..’ exhibition will be scanned and uploaded to our online gallery at www.playsthething.org.uk . You can start this journey by taking a look at some of the entries that have already been submitted (see above).

All postcards received by 21st November 2011 will also be exhibited in a postcard exhibition at Toynbee Studios, 28 Commercial Street, London E1 6AB, England on the 22nd and 23rd November 2011 as part of the Play’s the Thing conference on wellbeing.

How do I sign up?

You sign up just by sending us your postcard. It really couldn’t be simpler! If you have any queries, you can send us an email at [email protected]

Who can participate?

Anybody aged between 1 - 120.

What should I include on the postcard?

Please include your name, a contact address and email if you have one.

We will endeavour to mention the names and towns of the contributors on the blog as they come in, but because of the expected number of participants it may not be possible to acknowledge everybody’s postcard.

How many postcards will be accepted?

There is no limit with regards to the online exhibition. The more the better!

Size

Submissions should be regular postcard sized (approximately 4” x 6” / 10cm x 15cm), e.g. you could cut out a bit of card board.

Medium

Artworks can be made using any medium (such as photography, crayon, paint, collage) but be aware that they will have to go through the postal system!

Theme

The theme is “A Great Day Looks Like..”

Deadline

The deadline for us to receive your postcard for the Play’s the Thing exhibition is 21 November 2011.