Workshop Round #2

Culture, Community, and Collective Liberation (The Arts for Healing and Justice Network)

The Arts for Healing and Justice Network (AHJN) provides structure and coordination for the collaborative work of over 20 community-based arts education organizations serving system-impacted youth in Los Angeles County in order to provide alternatives to incarceration and center arts as a change strategy for young people, communities, and systems. In this experiential workshop participants will have the opportunity to engage in art-making while hearing from artists and advocates about the critical role the arts play in promoting culture, fostering community, and advancing the goals of collective liberation.

Art & Law At The Border: Creative Strategies For Transnational Justice (Dulce M. López)

This workshop explores the role of art as a tool for political and legal resistance, focusing on how visual storytelling and creative advocacy have shaped migration and labor policies between the U.S. and Latin America. Through historical case studies and interactive exercises, participants will examine how art has influenced legal narratives, public policy, and transnational justice efforts. The goal is to foster a conversation on integrating creative strategies into legal practice and to encourage collective action beyond the workshop.

Freedom Stories: How Storytelling Can Be Used to End Mass Incarceration (ZEALOUS)

To Be Added.

Film Workshop

The Wait Room (Flyaway Productions)

Founded in 1996, Flyaway Productions democratizes public space. We make dances that are off the ground, site specific and politically driven. Flyaway's tools include coalition building, an intersectional feminist lens, and a body-based push against the constraints of gravity. Recent coalition partners include the Museum of African Diaspora, Empowerment Avenue, Essie Justice Group, Bend the Arc Jewish Action, the Tenderloin Museum, and UC Law. We’ve been supported by Guggenheim and Rauschenberg Foundation fellowships, NEFA’s National Dance Project, the National Endowment for the Arts, New Music USA, MAP, the Creative Work Fund, and the Rainin Foundation. From 2017-2023, Flyaway created The Decarceration Trilogy: Dismantling the Prison Industrial Complex One Dance at a Time. The Trilogy was rooted in collaboration with community organizations and people directly impacted by incarceration including Flyaway Artistic Director Jo Kreiter. This film features THE WAIT ROOM, the first in the trilogy. It honors the experience of women with incarcerated loved ones.

The Step (Broadway Advocacy Coalition)

Behind the walls of Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, the GSTARZ Step Team turns movement into a powerful act of resilience, using dance and education to reshape their futures from within. THE STEP follows the journey of the GSTARZ (Guys and Girls Stepping Towards a Rehabilitation Zone) and the impact that the community and cultural artform of stepping has on their lives and their loved ones as it grants them visibility to a world outside of the prison system. After 25 years of incarceration, Tami Eldridge founded the GSTARZ Step Team as a means to bring focus to her cohort pursuing higher education while incarcerated at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. In 2024, Tami received a Masters of Professional Studies from New York Theological Seminary, a first of its kind for a woman incarcerated in the state of New York. During her studies, Tami established the GSTARZ as her Seminary practice - a physical outlet to balance the oppression of life in prison and the mental fatigue of pursuing higher education, a requirement for all members of the step team. Through mesmerizing performances, spoken word poetry, and intimate interviews, THE STEP captures the power of movement as a form of resistance, and a source of resilience in one of the country’s most restrictive environments.

Broadway Advocacy Coalition unites artists and directly impacted advocates to develop story-based artivism that advances justice and drives systemic change. Deeply rooted in New York City, BAC works closely with partners and community organizations, such as the Alliance for Quality Education, the People's Campaign for Parole Justice, and the Release Aging People in Prison Campaign to work towards racial and economic justice in our broader community. We believe the arts and storytelling are uniquely capable of envisioning a world without systemic racism, moving people to take tangible action towards creating that world, and replacing dominant narratives that uphold and contribute to systemic racism. BAC's programming includes workshops, fellowships support for artist-advocates from marginalized communities, and large-scale narrative-based advocacy campaigns. Underpinning all of BAC's work is our signature Theater of Change (TOC) Methodology which brings together theater artists, law and policy students and professionals, and directly impacted change agents with first-hand experience of systemic inequities to learn from each other and expand their capacity, community, and impact.