We can all picture bars and razor wire fences, but if we haven’t actually been in prison ourselves, it’s hard to imagine what life inside is like. What’s really happening in there? What would the people incarcerated offer people to see? These are the questions that artist and activist Mark Strandquist wants to help answer.
He sent 2,500 American inmates a blank postcard with these words printed at the top:
If you could create a window in the prison walls, what would you want the world to see? Please draw, describe or create an image that represents your window.
The responses range from innocent and precious to haunting and forlorn. One, from Alfred Espinoza, depicts a man sitting at a desk in an otherwise empty classroom with a blank chalk board and a ball-and-chain around his ankle, crystallizing so much of what is wrong with the prison ethos in America. In a letter to PBS Newshour, Espinoza says, “We are always learning something regardless of our circumstances in here.”
Strandquist started the postcard project through Prison Health News, a newsletter published quarterly by Philadelphia FIGHT, a nonprofit AIDS advocacy organization. According to PBS, the newsletter provides “medical information, news and personal stories and poems submitted by current and former prisoners for an audience of thousands of people in prison.”
The postcards are actually an extension of another project of Strandquist’s — Windows From Prison — which, starting in 2012, posed a similar question to prisoners and incarcerated youth: “If you could have a window in your cell, what place from your past would it look out to?” The artist then set out to photograph the scenes inmates described, some of which were published in Prison Health News.
“It’s a complex conversation we’re trying to have in a small area,” Strandquist says. “It’s amazing that just a tiny flimsy piece of paper could be infused with so much history, ideas, struggles and beautiful reflections on life and love — the piece of paper becomes so incredibly powerful.”
Let’s hope that power can help lead to a more humane prison system.
Tag: art therapy
For Those in Hospitals, Exposure to the Arts Speeds Recovery and Lowers Medical Costs
With hallway after hallway of white walls and the monotonous beeping of medical machines, the inside of a hospital doesn’t really seem like the best kind of environment to recuperate and recover.
Strolling through Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic, however, is a different story. Instead of plain walls, there are paintings and replacing the noise of bedside machines are the sounds of musical instruments.
Unusual, right? Well, all of this is due to the Cleveland Clinic embracing a new form of medicine: arts therapy. Working in conjunction with the Global Arts and Medicine Institute, run by Iva Fattorini, this top-notch medical facility is redefining traditional hospital protocol.
According to Fattorini, incorporating the arts into the hospitals is beneficial to everyone, as it can facilitate the healing process and potentially lower hospital costs, according to Fast Company.
Research has shown that when patients participate in arts therapy, hospital stays are shortened and patients require less medication for pain, as well as overall have a more positive experience. For example, after a patient has suffered a stroke, music is often used to reintroduce speech and numb extreme pain.
The same positiveness is true for employees who are more satisfied going to and leaving work.
Lining the 24 million square feet of clinic wall space are 5,200 original art pieces and 1,500 posters and prints. The hospital also offers daily music performances and delivers the arts bedside through 400 hours of music therapy and 200 hours of art therapy each week.
All of this isn’t just for the patients, though. For Fattorini, it’s a resource for the family and friends of patients as well. These people sit for hours or wander the halls, nervously awaiting the results and fate of loved one — and peaceful music or a serene piece of artwork can be a nice break from reality.
Fattorini isn’t content for this to just exist in Cleveland. She recently formed the social enterprise, Artocene, to spread arts therapy to hospitals across the country and throughout the world.
“The need to direct human emotions at a time of human uncertainty is very ubiquitous and people really appreciate it when it comes from the caregivers,” Fattorini tells Fast Company. ““It’s about teamwork between artists, surgeons, architects, consultants, and investors together.”
And for people going through a tough time, sometimes a little touch of humanity is all that’s needed.
MORE: How One Woman Is Making Holistic Medicine Affordable