Transformative Arts
California prison arts programs, existing in possibility, the power of language, and our collective liberation
Note: In early March, the California Arts Council changed the name of its prison arts program from Arts in Corrections to Transformative Arts, after a significant, community-led process to better reflect the program’s firmly held values.
We have since been made aware by an established Los Angeles-based organization of the same name of the problems and confusion caused by their name’s appropriation. To uphold our value of accountability for harm and the healing of trauma through action, the CAC issued an immediate retraction of the name Transformative Arts and a formal apology to the organization. Staff will continue its outreach efforts to determine a meaningful name change in the future. Read the full statement here.
The following article was published in conjunction with the launch of our name change and prior to its retraction. To maintain the integrity of our historical record and out of respect for the thoughtful contributions to reimagine and retitle Arts in Corrections, this story will remain intact as a part of our archives.
“The future is already alive in each of us.”
– adrienne maree brown, We Will Not Cancel Us
(Blog content warning: mention of self-harm and addiction)
Today marks a special day in a long journey in the pursuit of transformation. From its inception as the Prison Arts Project in 1977 to its relaunch in 2013 thanks to fierce advocates, the California’s prison arts program has seen a lot of change. Now, the program is undergoing another meaningful modification: a name change, from Arts in Corrections to Transformative Arts.
The process began about two years ago, with an initial presentation to the CAC staff for feedback and input, followed by community presentations — first at UCLA’s Connecting Art and Law for Liberation conference, then others, both in-person and virtually, culminating in a community survey, where the participants themselves made the final decision for their program’s new name.
But for me, getting here, to this moment, started well before that.
Vulnerability and accountability
I believe in transformation. I have to, because I am not the same person I was five, 10, and much less 20 years ago. I have been evolving, shaped by my social conditions and experiences — living multiple lives — in constant transformation.
At 17, I was on a path of self-destruction. I dropped out of high school, escaping into self-harm and heavy drug use to forget who I was in this Brown body.
You may be asking yourself: What does this have to do with the prison arts field and Transformative Arts? Everything, really. Because art is a practice in vulnerability and accountability. In making myself vulnerable to you, reader, I am reminded of how powerful it is to know that the difference between someone experiencing incarceration and ourselves is a mixture of our race, social power, and sheer luck.
I believe we have all experienced the power of change in our lives, and at times, its bittersweet outcomes. We have all been the harmed, and the harmer — neither of which define the intricacies of our lives.
Through our own agency transformation journey, our team has been empowered to coordinate this program — a program that has the immense responsibility and capability to mold our justice model from one of punishment and retribution to one that sees the possibility and humanity of each person experiencing incarceration.
Transformation reminds me that I am not solely defined by my experiences as a young person lost in hopelessness, just as I am not solely defined by the adult before you today, committed to envisioning the infinite possibilities of liberation before us. I am the sum of all these things — full and complex. I am an artivist still moving toward their own healing journey reflected in countless pages of poetry, drawings, and collages sitting in journals over the span of over two decades. Art is and has been the place where I exist in possibility, in a future deeply affirmed in life.
Make changes, learn, and grow
I believe in transformation because I have witnessed transformation over my nearly five years of time at the California Arts Council. As challenging as it has been and continues to be, our agency has reshaped its understanding of racial equity work, acknowledging its complicity in perpetuating historical racial inequities. I have seen us open to the complicated and difficult task of holding ourselves accountable to our community — all people in California — through the Government Alliance for Race and Equity. I have seen us be brave enough to make changes, and mistakes — and we have grown because of it.
We wanted to focus on the positive aspects of the program that can transform people’s lives — because art gives people the opportunity and tools to imagine other possibilities for themselves, their communities, and the world.
I believe in transformation because change is inevitable. Each and every one of us has the capacity to shape that change. In my role as the Transformative Arts Program Manager, our Transformative Arts team has witnessed the power of the arts to heal and transform. Through our own agency transformation journey, our team has been empowered to coordinate this program — a program that has the immense responsibility and capability to mold our justice model from one of punishment and retribution to one that sees the possibility and humanity of each person experiencing incarceration.
Language has power
We believe that language has power, and we understand it can form our worldview. With this framework in mind, our team has prioritized efforts to break down barriers caused by inequities and challenge the status quo to create a culture shift within prison arts programming, words included. With this understanding, we knew we could no longer focus on the condition (that is being in prison) that our participants were experiencing; instead, we wanted to focus on the positive aspects of the program that can transform people’s lives — because art gives people the opportunity and tools to imagine other possibilities for themselves, their communities, and the world.
This name change is possibly one of the greatest accomplishments our team has made because it culminates our ambitions to center the voices and wishes of and reinforces our accountability to our program participants toward their own healing and transformation journey.
In our presentations for a new program name, we walked participants through a series of activities and asked folks to submit their ideas. The most exciting part of this whole process was asking our community inside the prisons their thoughts about the name change, and the response was far more rewarding than I could have ever expected — we received an overwhelming response of gratitude from our community inside about how much they appreciated being included in this process, when their voices are so rarely heard.
This name change is possibly one of the greatest accomplishments our team has made because it culminates our ambitions to center the voices and wishes of and reinforces our accountability to our program participants toward their own healing and transformation journey.
Faces of transformation
In the coming weeks, you will be witness to our new website and logo. You will meet some of the faces of transformation in a video produced by our Program Analyst Roman Sanchez, and you will understand the power of Transformative Arts before and during the pandemic in a report written by Dr. John Major Eason, Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Justice Lab. Like our program participants, we are evolving and transforming to the type of program that sees not only the possibility of change, but the future that is already alive in each and every one of us — a future deeply rooted in our humanity.
Like our program participants, we are evolving and transforming to the type of program that sees not only the possibility of change, but the future that is already alive in each and every one of us — a future deeply rooted in our humanity.
I believe in the power of our prison arts program not only to transform our participants, but also in the power of the arts to transform our collective society to reflect, grow, heal and change, too. I am ready to live in a truly just and liberated society — are you?
Mariana Moscoso is the Transformative Arts Program Manager for the California Arts Council. For more information about California’s Transformative Arts program, visit www.transformativeartsca.org.
