The Back Room—Bending Prison Bars Through Art

"The Back Room" hosted by ART & Justice is a multimedia art exhibition working with incarcerated artists at William Head Institution. ART & Justice is a participatory art-based research initiative, based out of the UBC, School of Nursing. "We work with federally incarcerated artists across BC. Our mandate is to support the holistic mental health, wellbeing and dignity of people in prison through arts-based, Indigenous-guided community building. We aim to explore ways to improve and sustain the positive impacts of art and creative writing for incarcerated people. . ." "To date we have distributed over 1,000 kits of high-quality art and writing supplies to people in prison, people living in halfway houses, and others facing extreme isolation and social exclusion in the community, including people on parole across BC. Each kit includes art and writing supplies, Indigenous teachings and medicines, messages of support from our team, and creative writing, visual art and poetry prompts and examples. Our team recognizes historic and ongoing colonialism as foundational to the current Canadian criminal legal system, and the immense health, social inequities that face Indigenous Peoples across the lifespan are correlated with unequal criminal legal system engagement; based on this understanding of the living nature of Canadian colonialism, this work is guided by our team Indigenous... read more...