FROM INSIDE OUT is an arts education program supported by PCA’s fiscal agency program. The program was formed by Rose Hill and Lindsay Michie Eades, who have been teaching art classes to male and female inmates at the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail in Virginia since 2005. The goal of FROM INSIDE OUT is to expand these classes to six prisons in Central Virginia.
PROJECT GOALS:
In addition to providing 14-week classes in regional jails and prisons, FROM INSIDE OUT aims to offer ongoing exhibitions of inmate art to the Charlottesville area. Artwork is currently on exhibit at Bozart Gallery and Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church. The long-term goal of the project is for Ms. Hill and Ms. Eades to be hired by the Virginia Department of Corrections as art teachers at the six prisons.
None of the prisons have an arts program at their facility and are often very limited in the programs they provide to inmates due to a shortage of volunteers. For every forty volunteers for programs at the male prisons there are four hundred at the female prisons. Prison officials and inmates assert that when inmates don't have a positive creative outlet, they tend to turn inward and become mentally paralyzed or destructive, contributing to the "revolving door" or recidivism problem in the prison system.
PROJECT OUTCOMES:
The art program has been very popular with inmates at the jail and there is always a waiting list to get into the classes. Letters of support from the Director of Programs and Superintendent of the ACRJ have also expressed the value of these classes, for example, in reducing the number of inmate on inmate assaults and inmate on staff assaults. Inmate art exhibitions challenge the public in the way they view art and the way they view people who have been incarcerated. The "Beyond the Bars" exhibition at McGuffey Art Center in February 2007, for example, was the best attended show at McGuffey and received the most publicity in its 30-year history.
"The Art Class is one positive factor in my life. It is also a good feeling to know that even if for one hour someone out there (outside of jail/prison) cares about sharing their time and talent with people that society considers worthless."
- Inmate at Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail
