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Outreach
Outreach is an important part of how the Prison Creative Arts Project fulfills its mission in the larger community. There are two main ways PCAP does this: Speakers Bureau and helping people across the state initiate projects like PCAP in their own areas through the Statewide Partnership Initiative.
Speakers Bureau
Speakers Bureau is a group of PCAP volunteers who facilitate presentations about PCAP and the system of incarceration to classrooms, campus organizations, and community organizations, both locally and nationally. Each presentation bears witness to the PCAP participants who are incarcerated in Michigan and to the thousands of other men, women, and children who are affected by the system. Each Speakers Bureau facilitator creates an interactive presentation designed to suit the needs and requests of the particular audience. The interactive format allows participants to personally engage with the material, as well as open up a dialogue about incarceration. Oftentimes these presentations provide a first glimpse into the world of incarceration and a first idea of who is being incarcerated in our country. Through drama, writing, and art activities, a short film, presentation of programs, and/or active discussion, we are able to engage in a topic rarely acknowledged or discussed in our communities.
To request that Speakers Bureau present to your group or organization, contact pcapinfo@umich.edu.
Statewide Program Development
PCAP’s twenty year commitment to the incarcerated in Michigan has typically focused on sending volunteer facilitators to prisons and youth facilities within roughly an hour’s drive of Ann Arbor. This year, PCAP is partnering with faculty at colleges and universities around the state, as well as with artists and arts organizations, to co-create/co-host creative arts-based collaborative workshops in prisons and juvenile facilities in their specific regions of the state. Facilitators are trained by and given creative resources from PCAP and are part of a network of facilitators available for brainstorming, troubleshooting, and ongoing support throughout their region.
PCAP’s collaborative workshops are typically weekly sessions ranging from 1.5 to 2 hours in length, where volunteer facilitators partner with incarcerated youth or adults to collaboratively create theater, creative writing, visual artwork, or other forms of art. Though this has been PCAP’s traditional model, there are a variety of ways that workshops could be structured and facilitated in your area of the state depending on the needs, availability and desires of you and/or your group, and PCAP’s statewide coordinator is happy to help you determine what makes the most sense.
If you have questions or wish to become further involved with the Statewide Partnership Initiative or PCAP in general, please contact Jaime Nelson, PCAP Statewide Coordinator, at 734.615.2953 or jjustina@umich.edu.
Statewide Program Development is made possible through the generous support of:
