ART IN CORRECTIONS

Youth Camp Art Education

In collaboration with the organizations Arts for Incarcerated Youth and the Armory Center for the Arts, faculty in the Department of Art and Art History have visited juvenile detention facilities in the Greater Los Angeles Area to facilitate art education for the young residents.

The goal of these collaborations is to create an on-site mural, which both engages the residents in an expressive art process and beautifies their surroundings. Following the completion of the murals, the young participants are invited to a culminating party where they are awarded certificates. At Camp McNair, which is part of the Los Angeles County Challenger Memorial Youth Camps, the young residents collaborated with studio arts faculty to create the mural pictured to the left over 25 total visits. Faculty worked with two groups for two hours each at every visit. Projects included drawing lessons, printmaking, watercolor, mixed media and painting techniques, as well as brainstorming time. Another mural was created with the young residents at Camp Scott in Santa Clarita.

Art in Corrections Conference

Research conducted in both state prisons and county jails have shown that visual and performing arts programs in correctional facilities not only improve inmates’ confidence, communication skills and emotional management, but result in better relations with other inmates and staff.

CFA partnered with California Lawyers for the Arts to host the second annual Arts in Corrections Conference, which invited experts in the field of prison arts, along with former inmates who developed an interest in painting and guitar making while incarcerated, to share their experiences, skills, and insights about current research.

The conference, which is geared toward arts educators, featured classes led by master artists with experience teaching different art disciplines in institutional settings; research about prison arts initiatives and their benefits; and information on best practices and the challenges facing these programs.

ART IN CORRECTIONS

Justice on Trial Film Festival

The Justice on Trial Film Festival speaks to the challenges of people caught up in the judicial system, who know only too well the pain and injustice—the jail house beatings, the solitary confinement, the stop-andfrisk humiliations, the selective prosecutions with bad plea bargains, and the unreasonably long sentences that they suffer. The film festival creates an opportunity to project their voices to a world deafened by the negative images and stereotypes presented by the media.

Growing out of a conversation between awardwinning author Michelle Alexander and Susan Burton, founder of A New Way of Life Re-Entry Project, the festival is now co-hosted by CFA, the Department of Communication Studies along with the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts. Justice on Trial serves as an extension of work conducted by communication studies faculty and students on prison reform.

Art Therapy at Juvenile Hall

Part of the LMU Department of Marital and Family Therapy with specialization in Art Therapy’s commitment to social justice and serving diverse local communities is introduced to students early in their coursework. While enrolled in Child Art Psychotherapy and Adolescent Art Psychotherapy courses, graduate students are guided in facilitating thoughtful artmaking experiences with adolescents housed at the Central Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles.

The opportunity to facilitate art-making, while considering developmental and contextual variables impacting the children they meet, prepares the graduate students for the complex demands of becoming effective therapists. At the same time, these handson experiences provide the children and teens with creative and caring engagement that expands what their current settings and curricula offer.

The films presented as part of the festival are poignant and thought-provoking, and address the impact of mass incarceration. This festival gives filmmakers, advocates, and those affected a platform to discover the human side of the story and creates an opportunity to project unheard voices to a world deafened by the negative images and stereotypes presented by the media.

“We hold the Justice on Trial Film Festival every year to create a platform for stories of our forgotten fellow citizens behind bars. Since many states and the federal government are implementing criminal justice reforms right now, this is a particularly critical time to increase awareness of the effects of mass incarceration. The Festival brings communities together...to have vital discussions about the injustices of our system and to explore the potential solutions.”

Susan Barton,

Founder, A New Way of Life

1 LMU Drive St. Robert’s Hall, Suite 100 Los Angeles, CA 90045 310.338.5853

cfa.lmu.edu giving.lmu.edu