"You have all these emotions inside you, and you want to get them out, and you create this beautiful art or you write this story...or you put together this collage...and you have this thing, this way of getting that thing out.."

We are diving in to 2020! Arts programs in prisons around the state are growing, changing, and emerging. The calendar is full of opportunities to engage the public in better understanding the transformative power of the arts. The conversation on arts in re-entry is building steam. Read below for events and opportunities you can be a part of this winter and spring.
 
Each month, our newsletter features stories from people who have seen the impact that the arts can have inside and outside prisons. This month, we bring you the words of Pablo Tanguay - poet, teacher, and program manager at Healing Broken Circles.
 
When I began as a volunteer at Marion Correctional years ago, I taught a poetry class once a week. In those two hours, over the course of an academic term, my students and I studied poets from Homer to D. Wayne Betts, poetic forms from the ghazal to the sonnet, and transformations enacted on language via conquest, everyday life, and poetry itself. We read with purpose and fervor, and we made poems that transcended our supposed capabilities.
 
That once-a-week class led me, eventually, out of academia entirely and into a fulltime programming position with Healing Broken Circles, the non-profit through which I taught and that runs the Community Center at Marion. Now, instead of two-hours a week inside a medium security prison, I spend the better part of my work life there. Instead a teaching a single class, I help my incarcerated colleagues organize what amounts to a sort of mini college, only better because it includes not just courses in the Arts and Sciences (Theatre, Creative Writing, Gender and Power, Psychology, Philosophy, etc. & etc), but also Yoga, Financial Wellness, Non-violent Communication, and well over a dozen other trauma-centered, strength-based programs. Each semester, we reach almost a quarter of the prison’s population. 
 
Had I space to do it, I’d tell you about each of my colleagues, the incarcerated guys who have transformed, as if by magic, a few dreary rooms into the non-judgmental hive of curiosity, inquiry, learning, healing, and restoration that is HBC’s Community Center. My colleagues have built—under the most restrictive circumstances imaginable, inside a prison—an oasis, a community, a community rooted, above all else, in a deep and abiding trust in one another. I’ve never been around a group of human beings more invested in each other’s well-being and success. 
 
I want to say that when I taught that one poetry class for two hours a week, I was able to compartmentalize the work and not bring prison home, that it wasn’t until I started working full time inside that my work began to infuse the rest of my life. But the truth is I was transformed on that first day inside the Community Center. I don’t mean I walked out in some revelatory state. I wouldn’t, in fact, at the time, have used such a dramatic word as “transform” to describe my state. But it’s clear now, in retrospect, that that’s exactly what happened: I changed from one thing to another. I changed from someone who envisioned the incarcerated as a class of people to someone who became a part of a remarkable community of human beings.   
 
-Pablo Tanguay

Registration is open! 
Ohio Prison Arts Connection Statewide Gathering 
April 3 | Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus
 
Artists, prison staff, returning citizens, re-entry professionals, social service providers, people in higher education, interested community members from all over the state - all are welcome to join us for a one-day gathering that will feature art engagement opportunities, focus group meetings on trauma-informed art practice and the arts and re-entry, a panel on the role of the arts in promoting wellness, and much more. You can register today at this website and get more details. 

A three-day art extravaganza
Kent Clash Day 2020
February 6-8
 
In the spirit of the band The Clash, a team of artists from Kent State participates in an annual celebration of unity, tolerance, and activism. This year, Kent Clash Day spans three days of panels, art exhibitions, film screenings, concerts, and more, all focused on the intersection of art and incarceration - and is raising money to support Jail Guitar Doors, a burgeoning music program at Grafton Correctional.  
 
Among the events for the weekend are a conversation with Jessie Glover of Ohio Prison Arts Connection and Zachary Thomas of Writers in Residence, visual interpretations of poetry created by writers in the ID-13 Prison Literacy Project, a screening of Pens to Pictures films, and more.
 
Head to this website and scroll down for a complete listing of the weekend's events as well as an opportunity to donate.

Save the date
Ohio Prison Arts Connection at the Columbus Arts Festival
June 12-14, 2020
 
Ohio Prison Arts Connection will have a booth at the renowned Columbus Arts Festival in the Big Local Art Tent. We'll feature art by currently and formerly incarcerated artists, video features on current programs, and more. We hope you'll join us for part of the weekend and this great opportunity to engage the public about the role of the arts for people who are justice-involved. 

Art exhibition - currently and formerly incarcerated artists
February 29 | Strauss Gallery, Hamilton, Ohio
 
We just helped you make your Leap Day plans! This show is curated by Returning Artists Guild in partnership with Miami University, Ohio Innocence Project, and The Fringe Coffee House. There will be fire dancers, live music, poetry slams, artwork from those behind bars and those who have been released, storytellers, two of the best street artists in the region, live DJ's and more. Follow The Fringe Coffee House to learn more.

The photo in the header was taken during a rehearsal session for Oberlin Drama at Grafton in 2016 by the Oberlin Alumni Magazine. ODAG wrapped up its 7-year efforts at Grafton Correctional at the end of 2019 and, in this new year, teaching artists from Baldwin-Wallace will be taking on the direction of the drama program. 
 
The quotation in this email's subject line is from returned citizen and working artist Kamisha Thomas, who was a part of an arts therapy community while incarcerated.