Humanities New York is pleased to announce that 20 organizations across the state have received grants totaling $474,428 as part of the Post-Incarceration Humanities Partnership (PIHP): a cohort-based program that supports organizations that incorporate the humanities into their work of serving formerly incarcerated individuals and their families.
“PIHP helps create space for dialogue and reflection about the experience of re-entry and incarceration, work that is complementary to but ultimately distinct from social services and criminal-justice reform,” Director of Grants Joe Murphy explained, underscoring the program’s unique value. He continued: “By making the humanities more accessible to returning citizens and their families, each organization in the PIHP cohort is helping to center ‘the human’ in public discourse about incarceration and re-entry across New York State.”
In addition to receiving funding, grantees join a cohort that meets on a regular basis to share work and exchange ideas, knowledge, and experience. Of the 20 awarded grantees, 16 are entering their second and third years in the program. The opportunity to listen and learn from peers makes for a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts; involved organizations show trajectories that hold promise for humanities-based interventions beyond state lines.
Part and parcel of the initiative is continuous growth. Returning grantees report on how they’ll build upon work that’s essentially just begun. For example: with a 2023 grant and in partnership with Syracuse University, Center for Community Alternatives published two full volumes of Mend: a journal of prose, art, and poetry. This year, they’ll expand to multimedia and provide additional resources to contributors who are interested in pursuing more outlets.
On a broader level, PIHP itself evolves to address gaps as they surface through the open lines of communication intrinsic to involvement. A common theme among new recipients is a focus on youth and family indirectly impacted by the justice system.
“What started as a loose network of grantees is quickly congealing into a statewide community dedicated to the needs and interests of justice-impacted New Yorkers,” Murphy said.
With that, we warmly welcome the following organizations joining the PIHP cohort this year:
Artistic Noise
Visualizing Truth to Power: Documenting Our Lived-Experiences Through Art
Project Director: Calder Zwicky
Project Summary: A series of visual art projects, arts-based discussions, and a public art exhibition created by young people, focused on processing and sharing their experiences within the juvenile court system and other related systems.
New York, New York
Amount Awarded: $20,024
Drama Club
Hood Cycle: Lean In–How to Jail–Roll Out
Project Director: Josie Whittlesey
Project Summary: An ensemble of justice-involved youth will complete the 1st and 3rd parts of a trilogy of ethnographic performances as part of a public discussion examining the personal and systemic factors leading to justice involvement, incarceration, and reentry.
Queens, New York
Amount Awarded: $25,000
The Love Quest Foundation on behalf of Woman Unsilenced
The Sisteration Room
Project Director: Lonett Williams
Project Summary: Prison Talk in The Sisteration Room, a compelling podcast/live stream facilitates meaningful dialogues between formerly incarcerated people and society, with a focus on familial reconnection and community reintegration.
Amount Awarded: $15,716
Parole Preparation Project on behalf of Archive-Based Creative Arts
Archive-Based Creative Arts
Project Director: Michelle Lewin
Project Summary: Archive-Based Creative Arts is a remote workshop, publishing/exhibition platform and archive that supports and preserves the vision and artistry of currently and formerly incarcerated New Yorkers.
Amount Awarded: $25,000
Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities; Columbia University
Artmaking Is a Practice of Freedom
Project Director: Mia Ruyter
Project Summary: Artmaking Is a Practice of Freedom is an arts program that introduces contemporary art and art-making to women and their children who are clients at Hour Children, a non-profit providing supportive housing and services to women returning from prison.
Amount Awarded: $20,450
We also wish to congratulate and thank organizations who have recommitted to PIHP and are entering their second and third years in the program:
All Kings
Nature Quest
Project Director: Raul Espinoza
Project Summary: A three-day “rites of passage” experience for formerly incarcerated men, in which an inner journey of healing is framed as a search for identity and purpose.
Amount Awarded: $24,488
Art Start
See Me Because
Project Director: Danny Arenas
Project Summary: See Me Because will provide a platform for justice-involved youth to craft multimedia projects and explore complex personal narratives in an immersive public exhibition to initiate dialogue and advance youths’ self-actualization efforts.
Amount Awarded: $25,000
Bard College
Bard Prison Initiative: Bringing Holistic Reentry to the Capital Region
Project Director: Sayra Havranek
Project Summary: The Bard Prison Initiative will further strengthen its holistic, person-centric reentry supports for returning citizens in Upstate New York and the Capital Region, an effort founded and led by a formerly incarcerated BPI alumnus.
Amount Awarded: $25,000
Center for Community Alternatives
Project Mend: Writing and Publishing Beyond Prison
Project Director: Ron Boxx
Project Summary: Project Mend focuses on writing and publishing as a means by which formerly incarcerated individuals and their families in Syracuse, New York have the potential for transformation through reimagining themselves, their communities, and their futures.
Amount Awarded: $25,000
Civic Ensemble
ReEntry Theatre Program
Project Director: Julia Taylor
Project Summary: Civic Ensemble’s ReEntry Theatre Program will use humanities-based tools of story sharing and group dialogue to explore current themes and questions relevant to the local reentry community.
Amount Awarded: $25,000
Correctional Association of New York
In Transition: The Landscape and Living Histories of Incarceration
Project Directors: Yassmin Fashir and Toindranauth Ramdeo
Project Summary: In Transition: The Landscape and Living Histories of Incarceration examines the changing landscape of places, relationships, and understandings of history affected by incarceration using community-centered prison monitoring and dialogue.
Amount Awarded: $25,000
Echoes of Incarceration
The “Emerging Adult Justice” Dialogues
Project Director: Jeremy Robins
Project Summary: Echoes of Incarceration seeks to complete a groundbreaking series of short films on “Emerging Adult Justice,” and launch a public events series examining our country’s approach to the critical demographic of 18-25 year olds in the justice system.
Amount Awarded: $24,400
Artists Alliance on behalf of One Whales Tale
I Wish I Knew How…
Project Director: Ellpetha Tsivicos
Project Summary: A creative arts and healing program led by formerly incarcerated individuals that seeks to create a place to share, grow, and build a creative practice framed by post-incarcerated life.
Amount Awarded: $24,950
Herstory Writers Workshop
Herstory Behind and Beyond Bars
Project Director: Erika Duncan
Project Summary: Through an online curriculum for use in carceral settings, Herstory will expand its network of writing circles behind and beyond bars, in partnership with human rights organizations, academic institutions, and allies within the court system.
Centereach, New York
Amount Awarded: $25,000
Music on the Inside
Reentry Mentorships
Project Director: Alina Bloomgarden
Project Summary: Music on the Inside Reentry Mentorships match returning citizens one to one with dedicated professional musicians on their instrument to provide music instruction, new influences and encouragement in reentry.
New York, New York
Amount Awarded: $25,000
New York Foundation of the Arts on behalf of Incorrigibles
Bearing Witness to the Incarcerated Girls of New York
Project Director: Alison Cornyn
Project Summary: Incorrigibles, a documentary project born of the stories and lives of incarcerated girls from 1900 to today, connects women incarcerated in their teens with youth in Hudson today to bear witness to one another’s oral histories & to reinterpret the past.
Brooklyn, New York
Amount Awarded: $19,400
One Breath Rising
Time Out of Joint
Project Director: Joy Rosenthal
Project Summary: “Time Out of Joint” is an innovative educational project which hires educated former prisoners, working side-by-side with other seasoned educators to teach high school and college workshops about Shakespeare, prison education, and racism.
Amount Awarded: $25,000
Reentry Theater of Harlem
Rite of Passage for Returning Citizens
Project Director: Alexander Anderson
Project Summary: Reentry Theater of Harlem is dedicated to using rites of passage to support returning citizens as they heal from the shame, stigma and trauma of incarceration and strive to live healthy, meaningful and fulfilling lives.
Amount Awarded: $25,000
Voice Buffalo
Street Certified
Project Director: Tyrell Ford
Project Summary: Street Certified engages formerly incarcerated and/or justice-impacted people in critical reflection to support restoration, healing, transformation, accountability, and self-liberation toward a culture of dignity for all.
Amount Awarded: $25,000
The Post Incarceration Humanities Partnership is generously funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
