the confined arts

The Confined Arts (TCA) is a charitable program created by Isaac's Quarterly,
fiscally sponsored by Fractured Atlas and by Another Choice Youth and Family Outreach.

TCA offers a free grassroots advocacy and capacity building platform for artists who are justice-involved and for those people working to mitigate the imprint of the criminal legal system by seeking trauma-informed alternatives to incarceration.

Located at Another Choice Youth and Family Outreach at Mt. Zion A.M.E. Church in East Harlem and formerly at Columbia University, 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 that are used to describe the past experiences and limit the futures of individuals impacted by incarceration. Through artistry, collaborative activism, research, education, and training, TCA equips artists to influence policy change and use their artistry and knowledge to advocate for a world anchored in empathy and saturated with healing and prevention-based policies.

TCA has a two-part mission (updated 2022)

PART 1

Foster public programming and storytelling projects that use narratives that enable the imagination to counter the dehumanizing narratives that are driving criminal justice policy, and act as catalysts for the implementation of scenarios and solutions transcending the stigmatizing and unjust status quo.

PART 2

Provide strategic arts engagement education to artists who are formerly incarcerated, teaching artists, practitioners, and legal advocates who want to learn more about how they can use the arts to mitigate the imprints of economic and social inequality.

ARTS JUSTICE SAFETY COALITION

In 2020, TCA partnered with the Center for Court Innovation and Conspiring for Good to map, galvanize and support artists, arts organizations, projects, and programs focused on racial justice, restorative justice, transformative justice, and criminal legal system reform by forming the ARTS JUSTICE SAFETY COALITION (AJSC). The SAE Initiative offers an opportunity to build the individual and collective capacities of advocates and art-based entrepreneurs to scale their intended impact through education, development, and strategic partnering.