Programming
Training Projects
Virtual training opportunities for current Coordinating Organizations are intended to bolster the values upheld by the state prison arts program in the following areas:
Healing-Centered Best Practices for Arts Facilitators trainings should include pedagogies, philosophies, and arts education practices that support the Coordinating Organizations’ efforts and uplift their abilities to communicate lessons and elevate their content to reflect a meaningful healing-centered approach.
Race and Equity trainings include skills and approaches to activate narrative and culture shifts in Coordinating Organizations to center equity and justice. Trainings may include practical skills on how to make changes to organizational policies, program activities, and hiring practices that reflect the diverse communities represented in the prison population.
Restorative and Transformative Justice trainings include pedagogies, philosophies, and arts education practices that provide Coordinating Organizations’ administrative staff and Arts Providers tools to incorporate Restorative Justice and Transformative Justice into their organizational policies, TA workshops, and arts curriculum.
Strategic Partnership trainings illustrate and provide the resources necessary for Coordinating Organizations to partner with other community members/organizations to diversify income, grow capacity, creatively align values, and/or branch into new sectors.
California Lawyers for the Arts
Los Angeles
Project Summary: California Lawyers for the Arts is a statewide nonprofit organization that empowers the creative community by providing legal representation, alternative dispute resolution services and education. Through collaborative advocacy, CLA helped restore funding for arts in corrections in California a decade ago, and since then has produced evidence-based research on the benefits of arts programs for incarcerated individuals, presented multiple national conferences showcasing the arts as a resource for rehabilitation, and is currently working with five states to engage arts in justice reform efforts and increase support for arts in corrections programs. CLA will provide training for coordinating organizations in strategic collaboration so that they may develop cross-sector projects to help advance their organizations while increasing their ability to meet the needs of the incarcerated people that they serve. The course will focus on building strategic collaborative programs, with individual classes designed to build skills in principled negotiations and effective communication skills, using case study analysis and the review of sample MOUs and budgets which can be adapted for participants' projects. Participants will also learn how to research local, state and national funding sources that can be targeted for program expansion.
Creative Acts
LOS ANGELES
Project Summary: Creative Acts is a Black-owned, women-led organization. We have been working inside prisons using the power of the Arts to transform and heal for 15 years.
Using our unique approach to making deep, cultural change, our DEI/anti-racism training has been developed using theater, poetry, drawn art, dance and music as avenues to create a space of trust and safety in order to do the difficult work of self-reflection and transformation. This nonconfrontational approach has proven highly successful with organizations and non-profits, making Creative Acts emerging leaders in this space.
Marin Shakespeare Company
SAN RAFAEL
Project Summary: Marin Shakespeare Company will share practices in trauma-informed teaching and cultural competency awareness for Teaching Artists in prisons. Workshops will give an introduction to Drama Therapy approaches that can inspire teaching across disciplines. Workshops will be led by registered Drama Therapist Suraya Keating and Artists who have survived incarceration. The goal of the trainings is for Teaching Artists in Arts in Corrections to gain a deeper understanding of how to promote healing classroom dynamics.
Mariworks Productions
Sacramento
Project Summary: Mariworks Productions is a multimedia arts organization that provides culturally responsive pedagogy designed to boost self-awareness, restorative practices and healthy strategies for success in the home, school, neighborhood and workplace. Services are customized to clients’ needs including programs for one-on-one sessions, interactive workshops and keynote presentations as well as training facilitation, retreats and special events. Specialized Mariworks Productions programs are conducted in the local community, regional and statewide initiatives within sectors centered in education, healing arts, trauma-informed care, equity and inclusion. Through "edutainment," the mission is to uplift the importance of public health and safety as well as crisis prevention through creating safe spaces for community healing and wellness through the scope of creative expression, critical thinking and therapeutic self-care.
The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women/HIV Circle
San Francisco
Project Summary: Details coming soon.
TheatreWorkers Project
Los Angeles
Project Summary: TheatreWorkers Project will design and deliver a 12-hour Zoom-based training for coordinating organizations, administrative staff, and arts providers working inside California prisons. The virtual training will take place over two weekends and will include pedagogies, philosophies, and arts education practices that provide tools to incorporate Restorative Justice and Transformative Justice into their organizational policies, Arts in Corrections workshops, and arts curriculum. Workshop components will be delivered by a team of experts in the field, led by returned residents and including community-based consultants and TWP teaching artists. All participants will be asked to complete pre and post training assessment to gauge their knowledge of and feelings about the workshop content. These assessments will be used to measure the effectiveness of the training and will be shared with the Arts in Corrections staff as part of the final report.
Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural
sylmar
Project Summary: Tia Chucha’s Race and Equity workshop series will center consciousness raising, community building, and putting into practice anti-racist tactics in Arts in Corrections programming and beyond. Attendees to the workshops will be presented a historical overview of the foundation of white supremacy that led to building systems of oppression, in particular race in both U.S. context and international context. We will trace how this legacy led to incarcerating Black and Indigenous People of Color.
We will share examples on how specific communities have created their own versions to address harm and accountability to move away from the crime and punishment models created to maintain white supremacy. In addition, we will facilitate a space where the group can build community support as being a force directly working in the prison system, and honor those already doing anti-racist work.