Making a Difference
"The challenge was to make my hands go easy to make something I was scared to do."
"The gift is giving me a chance to live lost memories."
“I have had a feeling inside of me I have never experienced. It’s like a seed has been planted, and I will be the one to see it grow and blossom.”
"The gift was seeing the piece I wrote in type. Knowing that I wrote that made me feel proud."
"The gift of feeling and remembering is invaluable. I experience emotions and memories that lay covered up. All of it is very cathartic. The challenge is to allow myself to be in roles and situations I'm not used to-to step outside myself and do art-things I've never done before. Wow!"
"What I received today was trust."
The Inside/Outside program is designed to build inter-personal and life-management skills through the arts. The program works by bringing together individual writers, poets, visual, movement and theater artists into one team that conducts a series of creative workshops with residents at River City. These workshops culminate in a final performance that is written and performed by the women participants.
Through this process, Inside/Outside participants develop and improve skills of self-expression through writing, visual, and performing arts. Participants also develop and enhance important life skills including communication, teamwork, and leadership.
Moreover, participants learn to view art as a tool to process through painful aspects of their lives and to channel negative thoughts and feelings in a productive way. In doing so, Inside/Outside participants learn effective strategies for stress reduction.
ISOS teaches residents how to build strong communities through the arts. The program gives residents opportunities to create lives with depth. These are skills that are carried beyond prison walls and back into communities. Lowering recidivism reduces crime, allows families to stay together and generates fewer costs to the state.
These benefits of Inside/Outside are further enhanced with the involvement of the audience during the final performances. Audience members, representing a broad cross-section of Cincinnati, are often moved to tears as the residents share their stories, their art, and parts of themselves. Following the performance, audiences also enjoy the opportunity to speak with the residents more informally and learn about their experiences in the program. Through this coming together, the gap between those on the inside and those on the outside is narrowed both literally and figuratively.
ISOS Vision Statement
In the spirit of exploration, the artist team hopes to share the joy of writing, movement, drama, and visual art with the participants of Inside/Outside. Our vision is that participants embark on a journey of self-discovery, finding their own voice and mapping their own course. Using the past and future to shape the present, we each tap into our inner wisdom and are empowered by the warmth and community of other women. Expressing ourselves in a new way gives us comfort and insight, so that from this time on, the arts can be a refuge and a beacon for a healthy future.
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Inside /
Outside
The Prison Project
Participants study movement and storytelling techniques to share and express their stories
In addition to providing opportunities for creative collaboration and self-expression these exercises enhance self-esteem, team-building, and presentation abilities.
Literary
The ISOS Anthology includes select writings by participants. These writings are also read during the final performance.
Theatre and Movement
Visual
Participants also delve into self exploration and expression through symbolism and self-portraiture using various media
The Fall 2007 session of Inside/Outside is funded in part by
To help support the work that is Inside/Outside
Artistic and Executive Director, Contemporary Dance Theatre
Development Administrator for Inside/Outside
via Contemporary Dance Theatre
Last Updated MARCH 2008
Invisibility is a fact of life for women in prison.
All too often when we envision an inmate behind bars, we see a male face. The reality is quickly changing however, as women have become the fastest growing segment of the prison population.
According to the Ohio Justice and Policy Center research, since 1980, the number of women entering Ohio’s prisons has risen by almost 400 percent, roughly double the increase for men.
Women incarcerated at River City range in age from 19-60 years old. They come from every race, class, ethnicity, and family background. The common denominator is their addiction and their strong desire to transform their lives.
At Inside/Outside, we believe that the arts can help facilitate this transformation. Moreover, we believe that through this project, women can build confidence in their own abilities and develop essential life-management skills that will help them avoid re-incarceration.
Inside/Outside extends the arts to residents at Cincinnati’s River City Correctional Center, a diversionary program for women with substance abuse issues who would otherwise be sent to the Ohio Reformatory for Women.
Participants listen to and review the work of contemporary writers and poets and follow prompts to explore their lives through process writing.
The ISOS model encourages exploration, development, and expression of the processes that make art and life more meaningful.
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