Provides educators with some of the tools needed to establish liberatory praxis in the classroom.

Spring 2018 Issue of Aperture edited by, Marking Time curator,
Dr. Nicole R. Fleetwood. Coinciding with the issue was an exhibition of the same name at Aperture Gallery, which addresses the unique role photography plays in creating a visual record of the national crisis of mass incarceration, despite the increasing difficulty of gaining access inside prisons. 

Art for Justice makes direct grants to artists and advocates focused on safely reducing the prison population, promoting justice reinvestment and creating art that changes the narrative around mass incarceration.

The Arts for Healing and Justice Network (AHJN) is an interdisciplinary collaborative that provides exceptional arts programming in order to build resiliency and wellness, eliminate recidivism, and transform the juvenile justice system.

Through gifts from tens of thousands of individuals and companies each year, ArtsWave funds and supports more than 150 projects and cultural organizations that will fuel our region’s rebound. With funding, services, and advocacy, ArtsWave fuels a more vibrant regional economy and connected community through the arts. 

This is the space to introduce the Services section. Briefly describe the types of services offered and highlight any special benefits or features.

PRISON MAPS is a set of two mappings depicting the prison growth of contemporary mass incarceration: What is the Prison Industrial Complex? and What is the Context for Today’s Prison Industrial Complex?

The Equal Justice Initiative is committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society.

Inspired by Frederick Douglass’s recognition that freedom begins with a book, Freedom Reads supports the efforts of people in prison to transform their lives through increased access to books, writers and performing artists.

Across Pennsylvania, incarcerated people and their loved ones have been fighting for decades to build a more free world. Now, a group of educators, care-givers, and organizers from the movement to end mass incarceration are founding a school in Philadelphia for the children we love. At Freedom Side School, we teach love, learn freedom, and practice healing justice. Our goal is to nurture, strengthen and prepare our students to be future visionaries and organizers to create a better tomorrow.

A national network and resource for those creating art in and around the criminal legal system.

The Language Project serves three purposes. First, through a series of powerful pieces by and about people with intimate experience with incarceration, we show the human impact of the words we choose. Second, our guide, “What Words We Use — and Avoid — When Covering People and Incarceration,” makes public our decision to avoid labels such as “inmate,” in favor of language that follows the logic of “person-first” language. Third, we provide alternatives to
the labels.

Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration investigates the  impact of the carceral state on American life through the lens of art and visual culture. The multi-platform project grows out of a decade of research by Dr. Nicole R. Fleetwood, author, curator and James Weldon Johnson Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU.  Marking Time encompasses an award-winning book, a traveling exhibition, and ongoing public programs and collaborations highlighting artists working to end mass incarceration and issues impacting imprisoned people, their loved ones, and communities.

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Marking Time grows out of groundbreaking research on contemporary culture, art, and the carceral state including interviews with currently and formerly incarcerated artists. Each initiative of this ongoing project foregrounds the creativity, activism, coalition building, and visions of freedom of directly impacted people.  Working with meager supplies and in the harshest conditions, imprisoned artists find ways to resist the brutality and isolation that prisons engender. Their innovative practices reveal how to create, to forge relations, and to embody and represent one’s life under unimaginable conditions. They provide visions and blueprints to transforming society.

The People’s Paper Co-op is a women led, women focused, women powered art and advocacy project at the Village of Arts and Humanities in North Philadelphia. The PPC looks to women in reentry as the leading criminal justice experts our society needs to hear from and uses art to amplify their stories, dreams, and visions for a more just and free world.

The Prison Watch program works to bring attention to the practices and policies of the inhumane criminal legal system.

Prisoner Express creates an opportunity for incarcerated people to get information, education and a public forum for creative self-expression.

Project NIA — “nia” meaning “with purpose” in Swahili—is a grassroots organization that works to end the arrest, detention, and incarceration of children and young adults by promoting restorative and transformative justice practices.

PARC is a prison abolitionist group committed to exposing and challenging all forms of institutionalized racism, sexism, able-ism, heterosexism, and classism, specifically within the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC). PARC believes in building strategies and tactics that build safety in our communities without reliance on the police or the PIC. We produce a directory that is free to prisoners upon request, and seek to work in solidarity with prisoners, ex-prisoners, their friends and families. We also work with teachers and activists on many prison issues. This work includes building action networks and materials that expose the continuing neglect and outright torture of more than 2 million people imprisoned within the USA; as well as the 5+ million who are under some form of surveillance and control by the so-called justice system. We are fully funded by individual donations and foundations.

A fellowship program to support formerly incarcerated artists, supporting the creation of original works produced in partnership with advocates and organizers to further criminal justice reform efforts. 

The Social Justice Institute strives to create a just world.  We examine the root causes of social injustice and develop innovative solutions by supporting creative research, scholarship, and pedagogy; social justice leaders on and off campus; and relationships within the university and into the community.  We work to eradicate all systems of oppression by redistributing and expanding resources and opportunities while exalting human dignity. 

Solitary Watch is a nonprofit national watchdog group that investigates, documents, and disseminates information on the widespread use of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails.

USPrisonCulture by Mariame Kaba is an attempt to document how the current prison industrial complex operates and to underscore the ways that it structures American society.

Worth Rises is a non-profit advocacy organization dedicated to dismantling the prison industry and ending the exploitation of those it touches.

WAV (We Amplify Voices) brings together small groups of individuals. Led by a WAV team leader, and guest artists they are guided through
a healing-centered creative process using art forms from songwriting,
to visual art, to creative writing, to vocal performance and dance.

Writers in Residence works to reduce the rate of recidivism within the juvenile justice system by facilitating an open forum for artistic self-expression and constructive self-reflection while also fostering genuine, long-lasting relationships with the residents through
creative writing.