(NEW YORK, NY) -- The Ford Foundation has awarded The Confined Arts in partnership with Another Choice Youth and Family Outreach Inc with a grant to launch the Strategic Arts & Education (SAE) initiative to provide free artistic literacy, professional development, and capacity-building to new/existing community-based artists, students, and advocates including justice-impacted people.

THE CONFINED ARTS (TCA) is a program that cultivates and showcases the talents and creative voices of artists directly impacted by mass incarceration and intersecting social justice issues. TCA enables artists to express their voices through the visual and performing arts, poetry, and music as a means to abolish inhumane narratives and socially degrading stigmas.

The mission of the SAE initiative is to provide free artistic literacy, professional development, and capacity building trainings and workshops to new and existing community-based artists (specifically those that have justice-involvement), young adults, students, advocates, teaching artists, practitioners, legal advocates, and organizations who want to learn more about entrepreneurship, community enhancement and/or how they can use the arts to mitigate the imprint of the criminal legal system. 

COMMUNITY ENHANCEMENT THROUGH THE ARTS - Wednesday, March 15, 10:00am-12:00pm (Virtual Participation). Community Enhancement Through the Arts offers tools and techniques for practitioners, legal advocates, and organizations who want to learn more about how they can increase their likelihood of success by implementing visual art, poetry, theater, and other formsof artistic expression into their strategies and methodologies. Join Susan Justiniano & Megha Sood as they explore social justice and engagement through writing, poetry, spoken word and how to become more engaged in the community through the literary and performing arts while developing collaborations and strengthening relationships.

THE KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEURSHIP - PART 1 - Wednesday, March 22, 10:00am-12:00pm (Virtual Participation). This 6-part workshop series is designed to help you as business leaders and entrepreneurs, acquire the insight and tools you’ll need to enhance your small businesses, intrapreneurship ventures, or socialentrepreneurship initiatives.

WRITING AS TRUTH TELLING - Saturday, March 11, 2:00pm-4:00pm (In-Person Participation in East Harlem, NY). This 8-week workshop meets one Saturday a week and is designed to prepare students to master specific painting, drawing, and collage skills required for concept art and visual development careers. This hybrid digital course also explores graphic communication through the understanding of the elements and principles of digital design; as well as, the creative design process, from idea conceptualization through the final execution of a digital document or illustration. 

INTRODUCTION TO ILLUSTRATION AND GRAPHIC DESIGN - Saturday, March 11, 12:00pm-2:00pm (In-Person Participation in East Harlem, NY). This 8-week workshop meets one Saturday a week and is designed to guide emerging writers in the development of their author’s voice and perspective. Participants will use their unique lenses, informed by their identity politics and social justice-based values, to effectively and creatively craft poetry and prose that grasps at the truth. During this workshop, we will explore key aspects of autobiographical writing such as critical analysis, personal narrative, surviving injustice, reflection on the past, and writing the future. This workshop will serve as a safe, trauma-informed space to explore the complexities of individual and shared identity in our lives.