Artwork is on the core of the PPC’s work supporting individuals impacted by the prison justice system. The opening exhibit at “Let’s Get Free” incorporates a wall of handmade paper sheets affixed with brief handwritten notes and a polaroid image of the creator.
These sheets have been made at PPC’s expungement clinics, the place individuals with prison data can meet a desk of pro-bono attorneys to get their data erased. After the authorized course of is finished, the contributors are invited to place their data in a blender to make what Strandquist calls a “paper smoothie.”
The moist pulp is then pressed right into a display screen and made into new paper, onto which {a photograph}– a sort of up to date mugshot– is glued. The individual is requested to put in writing a couple of traces of what they think about their future might be.
“The work we do is a manner of coping with the trauma of citing your prison report, speaking to a lawyer, revisiting your darkest days: ‘I see this mug shot. I see your report. You should be a nasty individual,’” mentioned Bowles. “’It doesn’t present the attractive mother or father or aspirational politician that you’re. We wished to create an area for individuals to remodel and heal by artwork.”
The PPC additionally has a undertaking to boost bail cash for girls in jail. Just lately launched girls are paired with an illustrator to create pictures with textual content that specific their visions of themselves, that are then offered as posters, t-shirts, baggage, and so forth. Strandquist mentioned, to date, this system has raised greater than $200,000 for the Philadelphia Group Bail Fund. The fund advocates for an finish to money bail and yearly makes an attempt to get as many Black girls out of jail as potential in time for Mom’s Day.
The PPC has simply began working with a brand new cohort of not too long ago launched girls, who will decide how finest to help others like themselves who’re nonetheless detained.
“There’s a lengthy historical past of artists or politicians or advocates talking for communities,” mentioned Strandquist. “We actually wished to do that work in a manner that we really feel is just not solely extra highly effective and efficient, but in addition equitable.”
The exhibition at Haverford consists of flowcharts figuring out all of the teams and artists the PPC has partnered with to do the work. Strandquist hopes the exhibition will be seen as a mannequin for a way arts will be successfully built-in into civic and social applications.
“In order that different individuals can see this in different cities and say: ‘In fact you wouldn’t do a undertaking about individuals with out them,’” mentioned Stransquist. “In fact you wouldn’t not convey arts in, as a result of it’s so therapeutic and transformative and opens up prospects.”
Haverford’s Hurford Heart for Arts and Humanities is within the midst of thematic programming for the educational 12 months round problems with prison justice, together with “Let’s Be Free.” As soon as the exhibition closes on April 21, the curatorial work won’t be misplaced. Strandquist plans to repurpose the exhibition supplies as a e book concerning the historical past and methodologies of the Individuals’s Paper Co-op.
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