Shakespeare Behind Bars

Shakespeare Behind Bars offers theatrical encounters with personal and social issues to incarcerated and post-incarcerated adults and juveniles, allowing them to develop life skills that will ensure their successful reintegration into society.

Now in its 22nd year, Shakespeare Behind Bars is the oldest program of its kind in North America. SBB programming serves incarcerated adults and youth using exclusively the works of William Shakespeare. SBB is the subject of Philomath Films award-winning documentary Shakespeare Behind Bars, which received its world premiere at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.

Sherrill Roland

Sherrill Roland is a returning student entering his thesis and final year of my Master's in Fine Arts at UNCG. He started a few years ago before his world turned upside down. In October 2013, Sherrill went to trial and subsequently lost, and 11 months later he was released from state prison in Washington, DC. Almost a year and a half after being released, he was exonerated of all charges and granted a bill of innocence.

Temporary Services

Temporary Services is Brett Bloom and Marc Fischer. We are based in Ft. Wayne (IN) and Chicago. Salem Collo-Julin worked with us from 2001-2014. We have existed, with several changes in membership and structure, since 1998. We produce exhibitions, events, projects, and publications. The distinction between art practice and other creative human endeavors is irrelevant to us.

P+NAP

Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project is a visual arts and humanities project that connects teaching artists and scholars to men at Stateville Maximum Security Prison through classes, workshops and guest lectures. Classes offered include subjects ranging from poetry, visual arts, and film study to political theory, social studies, and history. Classes are held once a week, on a 14 week semester schedule. Each course results in finished projects—visual art, creative writing and critical essays—with specific audiences and neighborhoods in mind. These works are then exhibited and read in neighborhood galleries and cultural centers. 

Sarah Mirk – bitchmedia

Sarah Mirk is a multimedia journalist based in Portland, Oregon who is always curious about gender, politics, and identity. She's the online editor of feminism and pop culture nonprofit Bitch Media and the host the feminist podcast Popaganda. In 2014, she published the open-minded relationship book Sex From Scratch: Making Your Own Relationship Rules. She also writes and edits nonfiction comics, including the popular series Oregon History Comics.


Los Angeles Poverty Department

Los Angeles Poverty Department was founded in 1985 by director-performer-activist John Malpede. LAPD was the first performance group in the nation made up principally of homeless people, and the first arts program of any kind for homeless people in Los Angeles.

Skid Row Los Angeles is the poorest area in the city, with the largest concentration of homeless people of any neighborhood in the US. At the time of its founding, homelessness in Skid Row was thought of as a “beans and blankets” issue. Poor and homeless people in the neighborhood were warehoused in shelters, fed in soup lines and there was little belief and no means for assisting people to rise out of this condition. LAPD, as the first arts organization on Skid Row, was active in a conversation and a movement with advocates, residents and social service professionals, that changed the paradigm by putting forward the idea that Skid Row could be improved, by embracing and nourishing the powers of the people who live there.

Based on our continuous, committed work on Skid Row, LAPD has been invited to create residency projects in communities throughout the US, and in the UK, France, The Netherlands, Belgium, Bolivia and Nicaragua, working with drug recovery programs, shelters, policy advocates and arts organizations. We’ve won a number of awards including LA Weekly Theater Award; New York’s Bessie Creation Award; the San Francisco Art Institute’s Kent Award; Theater L.A.’s Ovation Award; Cornerstone Theater’s Bridge Award; and an Otto Award for political theater. In 2008, LAPD was nominated for “Prix du Souffleur” award for “Best Ensemble” in Paris theater, for our production “Red Beard, Red Beard”.

Paul Rucker

He is a 2016 Rauschenberg Fellow, 2012 Creative Capital Grantee in visual art as well as a 2014 MAP Grantee for performance. In 2015 he was awarded a Joan Mitchell Painters & Sculptors Grant.