The Prison Arts Project Blog

Arts in County Corrections

The Arts in Corrections program was one of the most successful programs in the history of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. In a 1983 cost benefit study, Professor Larry Brewster, currently on the faculty of the University of San Francisco, demonstrated that participants in the Arts in Corrections program showed a 75% reduction in disciplinary write-ups within six months of joining the program. This is an extraordinary measure of a program’s success.

Arts in Corrections began in 1978 in Santa Cruz County, through the William James Association and the vision of Eloise Smith. Our organization continues to be deeply involved in prison arts, both with CDCR and the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and has a wealth of experienced fine artists available to provide high quality programming.

The realignment of California corrections, which will bring many inmates and convicted felons into the county correctional system on October 1, 2011, is an opportunity to integrate arts programming into the jail system from the outset. Involvement in the arts offers several significant and obvious benefits:
1. The reduction in disciplinary problems can reduce staff time involved in policing and documenting negative behavior.
2. Arts activities in the jails can focus on serving different sectors of the community at large, strengthening ties between the incarcerated and their community.
3. Community service arts projects will state clearly to the community that the goal of the criminal justice system is rehabilitation, and that the community has an important role in that process.

Because the realignment process will begin slowly, an arts program will require little investment at the beginning. With a small investment, it can demonstrate its effectiveness, and create community support for expanding programming as the jail population grows.

Attached you will find descriptions and cost projections for three fine arts classes that I feel would yield excellent results for all concerned.

Jack Bowers, Chair
Board of Directors
jack@williamjamesassociation.org

Three Classes for a Fine Arts Program in Santa Cruz County Jails

1. Oral Poetry Project- This class will be formatted to nurture individual self expression through oral poetry. Participants will be encouraged to develop original poetry using audio recording, as well as writing as formats. If possible, the instructor will be capable of facilitating this process in both English and Spanish. As appropriate, the work will be shared with appropriate parts of the community, e.g., community radio, youth programs.
Costs:
3- 12 week classes, 2 hours/ class, $75.00/class instructor fee $2700.00
Supplies 300.00
Total 3000.00

2. Jail Mural Project- The mural project is conceived as a way of making positive visual statements within the jail environment, to develop images that will contribute to reducing stress in the jail for all concerned. The mural should symbolize through a student generated process images of growth, rehabilitation and community.
Costs:
20 3-hour classes at $100/class $2000.00
Supplies 700.00
Total $2700.00

3. Guitar Building Project- This is a long-term project to develop arts related skills that fit vocational opportunities in the community, as well as provide significant opportunities for community service through building fine guitars for local schools. Two successful guitar building projects were carried out in CDCR in the 1990s, both under the supervision of local luthier and busisnessman Kenny Hill of Hill Guitars. He is enthusiastic about assisting in developing a project that can train woodworkers who can serve in the vibrant local guitar building community. An appropriate beginning would involve locating appropriate woodworking tools, establishing a space and developing an appropriate program concept.
Costs:
80 hours of administrative work @ $20/hr $1600.00
Supplies 500.00
Total $2100.00

Note: Overall administrative costs for the William James Association to carry out a project of this sort would be 20% of the total, and are not included above.

In June of 2010 William James Association received the ChangeMaker Award from San Francisco’s Intersection for the Arts. The Award “celebrates artists and organizations making a profound impact in the world… who inspire collaboration; embrace experimentation, integrity, and evolution; and encourage civic and community exchange and engagement.”

Prison/Culture, published by City Lights in 2010, investigates the culture of incarceration as an integral part of the American experience through a compilation of stunning and often heartrending art by inmates and other artists. It features text about the William James Association and the San Quentin Art Program and images of artwork by San Quentin artists.

Participants in the San Quentin Arts Program have produced anthologies, plays, paintings and prints, as well as musical compositions, which have been rendered for institutional as well as public engagement wherever possible. Working with the Marin Shakespeare Company, San Quentin Theater Arts participants have produced and performed three plays over the past 3 years: Romeo and Juliet (2010), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2009), and Much Ado About Nothing (2008). In the June 2010 performance, 10 inmates along with 5 other non-inmate actors performed William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to an audience of approximately 200 hundred other inmates, prison staff and volunteers, news reporters and outside guests.

Brothers in Pen is the name of the creative writing group, the members have produced three anthologies: “Brothers in Pen,” “A Means of Escape,” and “Tragedy, Struggle and Hope,” highlighting the talents, through the written word, of the men of San Quentin. In the latter, Tobias Wolff (This Boy’s Life) contributed the foreword.

The painting and printing classes have produced works of art in a diversity media.
Several prints have been accepted for inclusion in the permanent collection of the Library of Congress, including Blocks Off the Block, a 2010 edition of 35 hand-bound and hand-printed books of original linocut prints. The Tower Book was awarded the blue ribbon at the 2009 Marin County Fair Fine Art Exhibit. A collaborative piece on censorship, “Ill of Rights,” created by SQ printmakers and printed at SF Center for the Book’s ROADWORKS: Steamroller Prints in 2008, was selected for the County Fair Fine Art Exhibit.

In 2009, the Dalai Lama recognized SQ Artist Facilitator Steve Emrick as an Unsung Hero of Compassion. Presented to “individuals who, through their loving kindness and service to others, have made their communities and our world a better place,” Steve received this honor for his lifelong work in providing meaningful arts experiences in correctional facilities.

In 2009, Peter Merts’ Slideshow of the SQ Arts program is featured on Photo Philanthropy – a website dedicated to showcasing photo documentaries. Peter’ beautiful photography offers people from the outside a view into the power and beauty of what is happening in the 20×40 box that is the SQ Art Studio.

Also in 2009, Prominent writers Junot Diaz, Tobias Wolff and renown clown/doctor Patch Adams visited the program to share work and insights.

As you may or may not be aware, Arts in Corrections faces elimination in January. This urgent situation has developed from the current state budget crisis with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s response being to layoff staff in education, vocational, substance abuse, and other inmates programs – including the one Artist Facilitator at each prison.

We Need Your Help! -  Hearing in Sacramento on TUESDAY, DECEMBER 8!

We need your help – the Artist Facilitator position is critical to continuing arts programming with any consistency and quality and we want to raise our voices to powers-that-be. On Tuesday, December 8 at 1:30 PM, Room 447 of the Capitol Building, the Assembly Budget Subcommittee will hold a hearing on proposed budget cuts to CDCR Education programs, including Arts in Corrections.

During the public testimony portion of the hearing, we will present information in support of preserving Arts in Corrections. Professor Larry Brewster, whose 1983 research work demonstrated the effectiveness of Arts in Corrections, will join us to speak about that research and his recent study of AIC outcomes as well. Whether or not the Legislature chooses to eliminate Arts in Corrections, we feel like it is crucial that they learn what a transformative, cost effective we have.

If you are able, we would greatly appreciate your presence at the hearing. The physical presence of many supporters of Arts in Corrections in the room will add weight to our testimony.

Thank you,

Laurie Brooks, Executive Director
Jack Bowers, Board of Directors Chair

PLEASE Write Letters in Support of Arts in Corrections!

If you are unable to attend the hearing, please take a moment to contact your own legislator and urge them to preserve Arts in Corrections.
You can find out more about our letter writing campaign on a previous post.

On a Brighter Note

Peter Merts’ Slide Show of San Quentin’s Arts In Corrections program is featured on Photo Philanthropy – a new website that is dedicated to showcasing the work of photographers in social change.  Kudos to Peter for his beautiful photography that shows off the beauty of what is happening in the 20×40 box that is the San Quentin Art Studio.

Just wanting to share a story from the PBS NewsHour about the power, beauty, and complexity of poetry classes in prison:

Richard Shelton, a poet and professor at the University of Arizona, has been coming into prisons as a volunteer since the early ’70s, when a man on death row wrote to ask for feedback on his poems. In a new memoir, “Crossing the Yard,” Shelton writes of that and many other extraordinary experiences.

Link to video from PoetryFoundation.org