Workshop Round #2

Culture, Community, and Collective Liberation (The Arts for Healing and Justice Network)

The Arts for Healing and Justice Network (AHJN) provides structure and coordination for the collaborative work of over 20 community-based arts education organizations serving system-impacted youth in Los Angeles County in order to provide alternatives to incarceration and center arts as a change strategy for young people, communities, and systems. In this experiential workshop participants will have the opportunity to engage in art-making while hearing from artists and advocates about the critical role the arts play in promoting culture, fostering community, and advancing the goals of collective liberation.

Art & Law At The Border: Creative Strategies For Transnational Justice (Dulce M. López)

This workshop explores the role of art as a tool for political and legal resistance, focusing on how visual storytelling and creative advocacy have shaped migration and labor policies between the U.S. and Latin America. Through historical case studies and interactive exercises, participants will examine how art has influenced legal narratives, public policy, and transnational justice efforts. The goal is to foster a conversation on integrating creative strategies into legal practice and to encourage collective action beyond the workshop.

Freedom Stories: How Storytelling Can Be Used to End Mass Incarceration (ZEALOUS)

The Freedom Stories workshop will include a film screening, talk back, and storytelling workshop that uses the case study of our dedicated efforts to identify first hand accounts of pretrial freedom in Los Angeles and other locations with policies of bail reform, as a way to teach students and advocates critical new media advocacy skills. 

Film Workshop

The Wait Room (Flyaway Productions)

Founded in 1996, Flyaway Productions democratizes public space. We make dances that are off the ground, site specific and politically driven. Flyaway's tools include coalition building, an intersectional feminist lens, and a body-based push against the constraints of gravity. Recent coalition partners include the Museum of African Diaspora, Empowerment Avenue, Essie Justice Group, Bend the Arc Jewish Action, the Tenderloin Museum, and UC Law. We’ve been supported by Guggenheim and Rauschenberg Foundation fellowships, NEFA’s National Dance Project, the National Endowment for the Arts, New Music USA, MAP, the Creative Work Fund, and the Rainin Foundation. From 2017-2023, Flyaway created The Decarceration Trilogy: Dismantling the Prison Industrial Complex One Dance at a Time. The Trilogy was rooted in collaboration with community organizations and people directly impacted by incarceration including Flyaway Artistic Director Jo Kreiter. This film features THE WAIT ROOM, the first in the trilogy. It honors the experience of women with incarcerated loved ones.

The Step (Broadway Advocacy Coalition)

Behind the walls of Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, the GSTARZ Step Team turns movement into a powerful act of resilience, using dance and education to reshape their futures from within. THE STEP follows the journey of the GSTARZ (Guys and Girls Stepping Towards a Rehabilitation Zone) and the impact that the community and cultural artform of stepping has on their lives and their loved ones as it grants them visibility to a world outside of the prison system. After 25 years of incarceration, Tami Eldridge founded the GSTARZ Step Team as a means to bring focus to her cohort pursuing higher education while incarcerated at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. In 2024, Tami received a Masters of Professional Studies from New York Theological Seminary, a first of its kind for a woman incarcerated in the state of New York. During her studies, Tami established the GSTARZ as her Seminary practice - a physical outlet to balance the oppression of life in prison and the mental fatigue of pursuing higher education, a requirement for all members of the step team. Through mesmerizing performances, spoken word poetry, and intimate interviews, THE STEP captures the power of movement as a form of resistance, and a source of resilience in one of the country’s most restrictive environments.

Broadway Advocacy Coalition unites artists and directly impacted advocates to develop story-based artivism that advances justice and drives systemic change. Deeply rooted in New York City, BAC works closely with partners and community organizations, such as the Alliance for Quality Education, the People's Campaign for Parole Justice, and the Release Aging People in Prison Campaign to work towards racial and economic justice in our broader community. We believe the arts and storytelling are uniquely capable of envisioning a world without systemic racism, moving people to take tangible action towards creating that world, and replacing dominant narratives that uphold and contribute to systemic racism. BAC's programming includes workshops, fellowships support for artist-advocates from marginalized communities, and large-scale narrative-based advocacy campaigns. Underpinning all of BAC's work is our signature Theater of Change (TOC) Methodology which brings together theater artists, law and policy students and professionals, and directly impacted change agents with first-hand experience of systemic inequities to learn from each other and expand their capacity, community, and impact.

TheatreWorkers Project

TheatreWorkers Project (TWP) will screen STAND!, a short film written TWP’s Theatre Inside program at CSP-LAC and performed by incarcerated and formerly incarcerated actors. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the artists.

TheatreWorkers Project is a non-profit collaborative that provides opportunities for members of underserved and unheard communities to tell their stories through the medium of theatre and film, supports the creativity of at-promise youth, and produces high-quality professional projects that spotlight social issues and illuminate the human condition.

Marlene McCurtis (Associate Director, Documentarian and Lead Teaching Artist/Writing for TheatreWorkers Project) is a digital and literary storyteller with expertise spanning directing and writing nonfiction television and documentary films, community media engagement, and teaching creative writing in diverse communities. She is in post-production on Wednesdays in Mississippi, her first independent feature documentary, which has been selected for the Cucalorus and Athena Film Festival Work-in-Progress Labs. Marlene directed The Circle and STAND!, for TheatreWorkers Project. The Circle, a spoken word and movement collage, was written and performed by system-impacted artists. It has screened at the Social Justice Film Festival, the Global Peace Festival, the Monologue and Poetry International Film Festival, and the Justice on Trial Film Festival. STAND! was written by residents of CSP-Lancaster and performed by formerly incarcerated men. It is currently on the film festival circuit. Marlene is Ken Burns Film Award Finalist, a Lavine/Better Angels Fellow, a Firelight Media Documentary Lab Fellow, a Sundance Sustainability Humanities Fellow and a member of the Directors Guild of America (DGA).

Susan “Susie” Franklin Tanner (Founder/Director, TheatreWorkers Project - TWP) is an innovator in the field of documentary theatre & arts education with 40 years of experience as a producer, director, actor, teaching artist, and PD provider who has led the creation of thirty community-based TWP performance pieces. Her work in the California corrections includes guest artist workshops at Valley State Prison, and teaching artist positions at CIM and CIW. She is the director and lead physical theatre teaching artist for TWP’s theatre reentry programs at Cal State LA’s Project Rebound and The Francisco Homes. Susie conceived and co-produced TWP’s filmed poetic collage The Circle, conceived and co-directed the stage version of STAND!, and conceived and produced the film version, which was funded by. her LA County Performing Arts Recovery Individual Artist grant. She is a member of SAG-AFTRA, Actor’s Equity Association and Ensemble Studio Theatre/LA.

Ernst Fenelon Jr. (TWP’s Project Re/Frame Ensemble) is an International Author, Inspirational Speaker, Moderator, Life Coach, Spoken Word Poet, and Performer. He has channeled 33 years of lived experience (incarcerated 14 1/2 years; released almost 19 years ago) with California and global incarceration systems, into a book, courses, and lectures which focus on personal development, reintegration, and self-empowerment. Ernst works with TWP, Dancing Through Prison Walls, Prison Education Project (PEP), and other organizations to serve communities impacted by mass incarceration and social inequalities. For more information about Ernst, check out www.ernstfenelonjr.com.

Brandon Baker (TWP’s Project Re/Frame Ensemble) is a California Lawyers for the Arts Designing Creative Future Interns with TWP. He is 43 years old and formerly incarcerated. Brandon began working with TWP in 2020 as a participant in the CSP-LAC Theatre Inside correspondence program. His writing is included in TPW’s chapbook the book Inside/Out. In 2024, Brandon performed in “Walls,” a physic al theatre piece written and performed by residents of CSP-LAC’s “A” Yard. He aspires to pursue a career in the arts and has dreams of being the first formerly incarcerated person to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony (EGOT). He is published author, college graduate, but most of all he is proud that people believe in him, and that’s why he’s grateful to intern with TWP.