Women & Justice Project is excited to announce the launch of InsideArtsNY.org, a new website to highlight the powerful work of participants from the Expressive Arts and Write to Heal programs at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. Coordinated by Women & Justice Project, these sister programs are co-designed and co-facilitated by women leaders with personal knowledge of incarceration in NY’s prisons. Our goal is to provide a supportive space where participants can learn not only the skill of creative techniques but also how to engage those techniques – art, writing, dialogue – as potent vehicles for self-expression, self-reflection, communication, and personal transformation.

 

Both programs began in early 2024 at Bedford Hills, New York’s only maximum-security prison for women and the reception center for all women entering the state’s prison system. Expressive Arts sessions are facilitated in partnership with WJP artist-in-residence Katie Yamasaki and offered weekly for people living in general population. Write to Heal is facilitated in partnership with Columbia University’s Center for Justice and offered in Bedford’s Residential Rehabilitation Unit (a separate housing unit for people serving more than 15 days in segregated confinement).

 

We are thrilled to be able to share the artistic vision of program participants. Visit InsideArtsNY.org to learn more and view their work.