Race, Prison, Justice: Illuminating Story Through the Arts
March 29, 2021 | By Alex Ross (COM’22)
In a challenging year unlike any other, CFA’s own Judy Braha and André de Quadros teamed up to dig in to topics about which they’re both passionate: the intersection of race, the prison system, social justice, and the arts. Braha and de Quadros bring a unique blend of expertise and experience to the table, both having taught incarcerated, formerly incarcerated, and non-incarcerated students the power of the arts in combating crisis and injustice.
Braha has been a director, teacher, actor and arts advocate in New England for over three decades and is the head of the MFA Directing program at Boston University’s School of Theatre. She’s also been a faculty member in the BFA Acting program for more than 25 years. de Quadros, a professor of music, is a human rights activist, music educator, conductor, and ethnomusicologist, with professional work in the most diverse settings in 40 countries, spanning professional ensembles, and projects with prisons, psychosocial rehabilitation, refugees, poverty locations, and victims of torture, sexual violence, and trauma. Together, the two are bringing Race, Prison, Justice: Illuminating Story Through the Arts to life in order to spark arts-making and activism, using poetry, dance, painting, theatre, sculpture, graphic arts, music, spoken word, film, and more to create and enable the students to participate.
How did Race, Prison, Justice: Illuminating Story Through the Arts come to be?
Braha & de Quadros: We already had support from Dean Harvey Young through CFA’s Prison Arts Program. We then received two grants, one from the Office of Diversity and Inclusion and the other from the BU Arts Initiative. Our other partners include the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground, African American Studies, and the Initiative on Cities.
What kind of a background do you bring to the project?
We are passionate about bringing the arts to incarcerated populations in order to enable creativity and imagination to blossom in these harsh environments. We taught a multidisciplinary arts course in the Norfolk men’s prison and the Framingham women’s prison for almost a decade, both medium security state prisons populated with many individuals serving lengthy sentences. Through the BU Prison Education Program, we taught this class every semester for over 8 years, [and] the class brought music, theater, poetry, movement and more to our students there. Through the CFA Prison Arts Project, we subsequently have been teaching arts classes in Suffolk County Jail and the Middleton youth detention. Through all of these experiences, we have consistently brought along CFA students to participate and assist in these classes. We have worked in concert with the Collaborative Arts Incubator, a class we teach at CFA exploring collaborative arts, across disciplines, and the intersection of arts and activism. This class actually germinated the seeds for the Race, Prison, Justice project.
How would you describe the project to somebody unfamiliar with the program?
We are exploring the intersection of social justice and the arts through this interdisciplinary arts collaboration. This project is designed to explore race and incarceration as systemic injustice and the intersection of social justice and the arts, and will feature guests with a history of incarceration and arts activism, including Halim Flowers, formerly incarcerated artist, Ras-Jahallah Shabazz, formerly incarcerated poet, and Wayland Coleman, currently incarcerated artist. Participants have the opportunity to cultivate creativity, and learn how to use the arts as a powerful tool for storytelling, transformation, and healing.
What kind of content do the workshops cover? Who is involved in leading these workshops?
We are focusing the program on the lived stories of black and brown incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals who have found expansion and personal discovery as well as a path to activism in the arts. We are leading the workshops along with BU alum Brad Dumont (CFA’20) and Krystal Morin of Voices 21c.
What is the overall goal of the workshops?
We have almost 100 participants from across both campuses of the university – students, faculty/staff, alumni, and community members. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first arts-based, race-focused project on such a large and historic scale at BU. Therefore, our goals are to create shared understanding of the racial brutality of mass incarceration and to move to the creation of artwork of protest, inspiration, and consolation. These works of art will be housed in a virtual, public gallery as a public, social justice statement.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Race, Prison, Justice: Illuminating Story Through the Arts is part of the Prison Arts Project of the BU College of Fine Arts.
Join us for a series of artistic reflections by Boston University community members in reaction to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated artists through direct engagement, conversation, and collaboration.
Virtual Gallery Opening
Thursday, April 22, 2021 • 5pm
The BU community is invited to the opening event for a collection of works created in the spirit of the arts for activism in the Race, Prison, Justice Workshop and the CFA Collaborative Arts Incubator. Explore the virtual gallery. After the opening day, the virtual gallery will be open to guests for the remainder of the semester. Visit BU Arts Initiative and check the CFA events calendar for updates.
Race, Prison, Justice Forum
Friday, April 23, 2021 • 5pm
Special guests join CFA Dean Harvey Young and Race, Prison, Justice Project participants to discuss their takeaways from the workshop, share key works created, and discuss the importance of engaging in the Arts for Social Justice. All are welcome! Register for the virtual forum.
A Conversation with Featured Artist: Halim Flowers
Friday, April 23, 2021 • 6pm
Join us on Zoom for our scheduled events tinyurl.com/axzc48pz