Alliance For California Traditional Arts

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation CARES program leverages ACTA's long and deep experience of our existing programming inside correctional facilities to combine specific artists, art forms,and healing interventions in a single 16-week program consisting of four interconnected modules led by traditional artists. The art forms and artists that ACTA has been bringing inside prisons since 2014 come from many of the same neighborhoods as their students. They understand that the threat of incarceration is not far removed from their realities, their families, and their friends. At the same time, ACTAs teaching artists are masters of their forms. They are invested in practices that have transformed them and recognize the possibilities of transformation for those currently impacted by the system of incarceration.

The Arts in Corrections Program provides traditional arts residencies in California state prisons. ACTA coordinated various residencies serving program participants in state correctional institutions. Residencies consisted of two 13-17 week courses in traditional art forms, such as Native American bead work, Chicano murals, illustration, son jarocho, Afro-Colombian percussion, Mexican folk guitar, djembe, collective songwriting and storytelling. ACTA worked closely with the artists and correctional staff to coordinate the residencies and document the impact through site visits, photographs, videos, and coordination of an outside evaluation project.