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There are a considerable number of books on the art of the convicts, so Convicts & Art has been covered reasonably well but art is only once facet of the arts that has been examined to any extent. This book concerns itself with Convicts & the Arts. This book, then, endeavors to look at the convicts’ contribution to the arts, and demonstrates without doubt that the convicts made a significantly broader contribution to the culture of Australia than previously thought. There is a common misconception that all convicts were immediately institutionalised in a cell, and convict culture was solely a prison culture. It needs reinforcing that when the First Fleet arrived there were no prisons in Australia, no cells where they could put the convicts. The early governors and principal authorities quite logically endeavoured to use whatever skills the convicts had. So artists, generally forgers, were placed with those who were interested in recording a visual history of this new land. Among the convicts were bricklayers, house painters, jewelers, silversmiths, goldsmiths and so on, and some of them made significant contributions to the emerging society. Some of these contributions will be developed herein. This work endeavors to examine the convicts’ contribution to the arts in Australia, in areas like the writing of novels, poetry, autobiographies, sculpture, theatre, music, architecture, jewelry, the press, decorative arts and pottery.

"A powerful document of the inner lives and creative visions of men and women rendered invisible by America’s prison system. More than two million people are currently behind bars in the United States. Incarceration not only separates the imprisoned from their families and communities; it also exposes them to shocking levels of deprivation and abuse and subjects them to the arbitrary cruelties of the criminal justice system. Yet, as Nicole Fleetwood reveals, America’s prisons are filled with art. Despite the isolation and degradation they experience, the incarcerated are driven to assert their humanity in the face of a system that dehumanizes them. Based on interviews with currently and formerly incarcerated artists, prison visits, and the author’s own family experiences with the penal system, Marking Time shows how the imprisoned turn ordinary objects into elaborate works of art. Working with meager supplies and in the harshest conditions—including solitary confinement—these artists find ways to resist the brutality and depravity that prisons engender. The impact of their art, Fleetwood observes, can be felt far beyond prison walls. Their bold works, many of which are being published for the first time in this volume, have opened new possibilities in American art. As the movement to transform the country’s criminal justice system grows, art provides the imprisoned with a political voice. Their works testify to the economic and racial injustices that underpin American punishment and offer a new vision of freedom for the twenty-first century."

America's two million incarcerated men, women, and youth live in a hidden, isolated world filled with depression, anxiety, hostility, and violence. But the nation's soaring prison population has not been forgotten by a dedicated network of visual artists, writers, poets, dancers, musicians, and actors who teach the arts in correctional settings. This anthology compiles the narratives of several accomplished arts-in-corrections teachers who share their personal experiences, philosophies, and bittersweet anecdotes, as well as practical advice, survival skills, and program evaluation guidelines. Teaching the Arts Behind Bars is an invaluable tool for artists, program administrators, and corrections professionals, and a testament to the power of creative expression in promoting communication, positive social interaction, inner healing, and self-esteem.

The arts - spanning the visual, design, performing, media, musical, and literary genres - constitute an alternative lens through which to understand state-sanctioned punishment and its place in public consciousness. Perhaps this is especially so in the case of imprisonment: its nature, its functions, and the ways in which these register in public perceptions and desires, have historically and to some extent inherently been intertwined with the arts. But the products of this intertwinement have by no means been constant or uniform. Indeed, just as exploring imprisonment and its public meanings through the lens of the arts may reveal hitherto obscured instances of social control within or outside prisons, so too it may uncover a rich and possibly inspirational archive of resistance to them. This edited collection sheds light both on state use of the arts for the purposes of controlling prisoners and the broader public, and the use made of the arts by prisoners and portions of the broader public as tools of resistance to penal states. The book also includes a number of chapters that address arts-in-prisons programmes, making distinctive contributions to the literature on their philosophy, formation, operation, effectiveness, and research evaluation, as well as taking care to explore the politics surrounding and underpinning these multiple themes.

Performing Arts in Prisons explores prison arts in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and Chile, and creates a new framework for understanding its practices.