Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project: Picturing "The Long Term"

The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern Universityis an engine that drives questioning, experimentation, and collaboration across fields of study, with visual arts at the center. Located on Northwestern’s lakefront campus in Evanston, The Block engages audiences from across the Chicago region with exhibitions, films, and programs that spark critical thinking and creativity.A collection of more than 6,000 works fuels teaching, learning, and research across the university, supporting a rotating exhibition program grounded in Northwestern’s curriculum. Welcoming over 40,000 visitors each year, The Block works in collaboration with artists, scholars, students, and community partners to present art and ideas that inspire reflection and dialogue.F﻿ree parking infoThe Block is free and open to all.

The Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University

The Block Museum presents an online screening of "The Long Term" followed by a panel discussion with artists and educators of PNAP.

Picturing &quot;The Long Term&quot;:  Online Film Screening &amp; PNAP Panel Discussion(Various Artists, 2018, USA, digital, 13 mins hand-drawn animation)Since 2011, the Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project has brought artists, educators, and activists together with incarcerated individuals at Illinois’ Stateville Correctional Center. Through classes, workshops, and exhibitions, PNAP creates opportunities for learning across prison walls, connecting those inside with the tools and resources needed to creatively communicate their concerns to the larger Chicago community. This event highlights one such initiative: The Long Term (2016-2018), a series of works created around the issue of long-term sentencing policies and their impacts. This screening presents moving-image works generated by this project, including The Long Term (2018, 13 min), a hand-drawn animated film made by artists serving extended sentences, as well as testimonials from people impacted by long sentences. Following the films, members of the PNAP community will discuss the larger scope of the project, the challenges and rewards of arts and humanities education in state prisons, and the urgent need for sentencing reform today. Created by artists from Stateville Correctional Center and artists from the Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project:Chester Brost, Devon Daniels, Joseph Dole, Francisco “Paco” Estrada, Darrell W. Fair, R Dot Nandez, Damon Locks, C. McLaurin, Flynard “Fly 1” Miller, Andrés Reyes, Sarah Ross., B. R. Shaw, Bring and Johnny Taylor.Participants in the discussion will include:Damon Locks, visual artist and co-director of art and exhibitions for PNAPSarah Ross, visual artist and co-director of art and exhibitions for PNAPEric Blackmon, paralegal at Christian Lawndale Legal Center, educator-in-residence at the University of Chicago’s Human Rights Lab, former PNAP studentAudrey Petty, Director of the Sojourner Scholars Program at Illinois Humanities, PNAP instructorJill Petty, Communications Officer for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, co-director of Community Building at PNAPMiriam Petty, Associate Professor of Radio/Television/Film, Northwestern University, former PNAP teacherPresented in conjunction with One Book One Northwestern’s 2020-2021 selection, Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. Throughout the year, the Block will present a series of films, talks, and online exhibitions around themes of Stevenson’s book, which examines the effects of racial discrimination in the American legal system. For more information about these initiatives, visit <a href="https://bit.ly/BlockJustMerc" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">https://bit.ly/BlockJustMercy</a>.  IMAGE CREDIT: The Long Term [film still], 2018, courtesy of Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project.

Panelist bios:Sarah Ross, co-founder and co-director of Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project, which works at the intersection of art and justice, collaborating with incarcerated artists and writers to exhibit their work and engage in dialogue. PNAP is a grassroots project offering arts and humanities classes in Stateville Prison, a maximum security prison near Joliet, Illinois about 35 miles southwest of Chicago. Sarah has almost a decade of experience working with incarcerated people and has taught art and art history at various prisons in Illinois.Damon Locks is a visual artist, educator, vocalist/musician, and deejay. Since 2014 he has been working with Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project (PNAP) teaching art at Stateville Correctional Center. Damon has designed sound for Free Street Theater, dancer and educator Onye Ozuzu’s Project Tool, and dancer Anna Martine Whitehead. He is a teaching artist with the School Partnership for Art and Civic Engagement (SPACE) program through the Museum of Contemporary Art, introducing civically engaged art into the curriculum at the Sarah E. Goode STEM Academy. His group Black Monument Ensemble has performed at the MCA, Garfield Park Conservatory, and the Chicago Cultural Center.Eric Blackmon is a Chicago native who is an artist, poet and paralegal at the MacArthur Justice Center. He spent more than 15 years in Illinois state prisons for a crime he didn’t commit. He was represented by the Northwestern Center for Wrongful Convictions who has played an instrumental role in his release and his life since. Eric works diligently to reform the system that once wrongfully incarcerated him. He is a member of the Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project, Resident and Facilitator at the University of Chicago’s Pozen Center for Humans Rights and a student at Northeastern IL University. He also sits on the board of The Chicago Torture Justice Center and The Justice Renewal Initiative, two prominent forces that advocate for justice and reforms.Miriam Petty is an Associate Professor in the Department of Radio/Television/Film at Northwestern University. She is a Charles Deering McCormick Chair in Teaching Excellence, and the past Director of Graduate Studies for the Screen Cultures PhD Program. She writes and teaches about race, stardom, performance, reception, adaptation, and genre and is especially interested in the history of African American representation in Hollywood film.Audrey Petty is a writer and educator. She writes fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction. She is the editor of High Rise Stories: Voices from Chicago Public Housing (Voice of Witness/McSweeney&#x27;s) and co-editor of The Long Term (Haymarket Press). She has taught extensively in the fields of African American literature and creative writing and has served as the Simon Blattner Visiting Assistant Professor of Fiction at Northwestern. She is currently the Director of the Sojourner Scholars Program at Illinois Humanities and a teacher with Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project.Jill Petty is a Communications Officer for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, one of the largest philanthropic organizations in the US. Established in 1930, the Kellogg Foundation centers racial equity, the health and well-being of children, and community building in all funding. Jill has done communications work for organizations advocating social change, including Equal Justice Initiative, the Alabama-based legal nonprofit led by Bryan Stevenson. She is a member of the Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project teaching collective, an abolitionist arts and humanities project at Stateville Maximum Security Prison, near Chicago. Additionally, she is a former editor for South End Press, Beacon Press, and Northwestern University Press and a co-editor of The Long Term (Haymarket Press).More about <a href="https://p-nap.org/#" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">PNAP</a>: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. Classes develop 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. IMAGE CREDIT: Flynard &quot;Fly 1&quot; Miller, The Long Term [film still], 2018, courtesy of Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project.

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Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project: Picturing "The Long Term"

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Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project: Picturing "The Long Term"

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