RELEASE: Art in the Context of Gender Justice & Mass Incarceration

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Philadelphia FIGHT is the sponsor Beyond the Walls: Reentry Summit and Prison Health Care is a conference that welcomes all people interested in learning more about the impact of mass incarceration and health disparities on our communities. With a focus on community-led responses to the crisis in the criminal justice system, workshops reflect the needs of prisoners and former prisoners and will highlight the work being done to improve conditions inside the prison walls and in the communities to which prisoners are returning. 

About RELEASE: Art in the Context of Gender Justice & Mass Incarceration

Within the movement to end mass incarceration, the experiences of women, trans, and gender nonconforming folks are silenced and often forgotten. This workshop will demonstrate how art with a vision can be used to change and dismantle systems of oppression such as mass incarceration, and move us toward prison abolition and restorative justice. Through dialogue, we will re-center and re-focus our attention on those marginalized in this movement, and leave participants with tangible steps for how they can ethically be bridge builders and truth speakers.

The discussion will:

• center women, trans, and gender nonconforming people within the movement to end mass incarceration 
• highlight the work of artists/activists who work with marginalized communities affected by mass incarceration
• provide participants with tangible steps and guides for connecting personal narrative to a larger vision for change using art 
•  present the Leeway Foundation as a source of support (financial and otherwise) for women, trans and gender nonconforming artists seeking to dismantle the prison industrial complex

The Leeway Foundation Communications Director Denise Beek and Communications & Community Engagement Assistant Tahnee Jackson will moderate this discussion with panelists Nikki Powerhouse (ACG '18), Paulette Carrington (ACG '18), and Reno Prestige Wright.