February 13, 2024
Introducing the Inaugural ‘Writing Freedom’ Fellows
Presidential Initiatives
Imagining Freedom
“Purgatory” (detail), 2009. Includes image transfers, prison-issued soap, toothpaste, and playing cards. Artwork: Jesse Krimes
Countering the criminal legal system’s forces of dehumanization, isolation, and separation
Imagining Freedom supports artistic and humanistic work that centers the voices and knowledge of people who have experienced the impacts of incarceration. The arts and humanities have unique power to interrupt the narrative and cultural forces upholding the criminal legal system and counteract its most enduring, least visible impacts. As one of the Foundation’s core Presidential Initiatives, Imagining Freedom exemplifies our vision to support artistic, cultural, and humanities work as conduits for understanding.
Nearly half of American adults have a relative who has spent time in jail or prison; about 20 percent of children have a parent who is or has been incarcerated.
Inside the office of Dr. David Turner III, who is an assistant professor of Black life and racial justice at UCLA, as well as the faculty director of Imagining Freedom grantee Million Dollar Hoods. Photo: Carlos Jaramillo for Mellon Foundation
Professor Kelly Lytle Hernández, who is the founder and principal advisor of Million Dollar Hoods. Photo: Carlos Jaramillo for Mellon Foundation
The US criminal legal system dehumanizes, silences, and isolates the tens of millions of people whose lives it touches. By design, it systematically prevents them from leading full civic, creative, and intellectual lives and deprives the public of their voices and perspectives. We cannot understand who we are as a country if we don’t listen to all of the voices that make up our interdependent communities. Through our grantmaking we seek to:
1. Advance the participation of system-impacted people in intellectual and creative communities. We support fellowships and residencies for system-impacted artists, writers, and other cultural workers to cultivate their practices, grow their leadership capacity, and build supportive community—regardless of whether their works focus on the criminal legal system.
Jesse Krimes
Artist and executive director
Center for Art & Advocacy
Artist and executive director
Center for Art & Advocacy
“We create a space for artists and advocates to be in community with each other… freedom and liberty to think, to strategize, to dream and imagine.”
2. Support the creation and circulation of exemplary scholarly, archival, artistic storytelling, and other cultural work, that examines the experience of people who have been impacted by carceral systems, as well as the history and present of the systems themselves. This can take many forms, including:
- Knowledge production that examines the history of carceral systems and fuels the envisioning of alternatives. This includes research collaborations beyond and across academic institutions; development and recognition opportunities for emergent scholars; and opportunities for public engagement with related academic research.
- Community-based and scholarly archival efforts to document the perspectives, community-building, and cultural production of people who are or have been incarcerated.
- Select storytelling projects with demonstrable potential to reach large audiences and shift narratives around incarceration. This may include: documentary film, select media content and associated engagement campaigns; long-form journalism; exhibitions; and performing and visual arts projects.
3. Broaden access to literature, library resources, and humanities-based learning communities within carceral settings to counter the intellectual and cultural deprivation caused by incarceration. We make grants to support partnerships with public libraries and other entities that provide broad access to books and research materials within prisons, as well as inside/outside collaborations involving communities of rigorous ongoing learning (e.g., study groups) and humanities-based learning materials.
Reginald Dwayne Betts, who is a poet, lawyer, and the founder and chief executive officer of Imagining Freedom grantee Freedom Reads. Photo: Alexander Saladrigas for Mellon Foundation
A bookshelf holding books that are a part of a Freedom Library, a signature project of Freedom Reads. Photo: Alexander Saladrigas for Mellon Foundation
Photo: Alexander Saladrigas for Mellon Foundation
More about Imagining Freedom
Imagining Freedom is a multi-year initiative. Although the Foundation occasionally releases targeted requests for projects that further the reach of the initiative, most proposals are accepted by invitation only.
While we recognize the value of many projects, the following fall outside the scope of the initiative:
- Arts, workforce development, skill-building, peer support, and other in-prison training programs
- Books-to-prison programs without a curated focus on the humanities or connection to ongoing learning communities
- Programs for youth (participants under the age of 18)
- Diversion or alternative-to-incarceration programs
- Re-entry programs
Please see Mellon’s Higher Learning grantmaking strategies for credit-bearing, degree-granting higher education in prison programs.
Related
Past event
Imagining Freedom
February 15, 2023
“Imagining Freedom”: Supporting Creatives & Thinkers Reenvisioning the Criminal Legal System
February 15, 2023
NPR: ‘Imagining Freedom’ will give $125 million to art projects focused on incarceration
What is the liberatory power of the arts and humanities?
Beyond Incarceration
Mellon voices
What’s the Point of Higher Education in Prison? For One Thing, It’s a Human Right.