The Confined Arts
The Confined Arts (TCA) is a program at the Center for Justice at Columbia University to illustrate and showcase the talents and creative voices of artists directly impacted by mass incarceration and intersecting social justice issues. TCA uses collaborative activism to express the limitations and restraints produced out of dehumanization and injustice. This artist-led platform aims to influence policy change and to lay the foundation for imagining a world anchored on empathy and saturated with healing and prevention-based policies. This platform provides an outlet for artists to express their voices through the visual and performing arts, poetry, and music as a means to abolish the inhumane narratives and socially degrading stigmas that are used to describe the past experiences and limit the futures of individuals impacted by incarceration.
TCA has a 2-part mission:
- Counter and change the dehumanizing narratives that are driving criminal justice policy to empathy based narratives that enable the imagination and implementation of scenarios and solutions transcending the stigmatizing and unjust status quo;
- Recognize and elevate the role of the arts in touching people emotionally, fostering human connection, building empathy, bridging worlds, changing the hearts and minds of people able to influence policy, and building activism, envisioning a world different from the one currently existing and enabling people to make it a reality.
LEARN MORE AT: WWW.THECONFINEDARTS.ORG