With support from the California Arts Council, Creative Acts will sustain core general operations—including staff salaries and organizational infrastructure—to remain rooted in Inglewood and deepen capacity at a crucial moment when gentrification threatens historically Black communities and organizations. Creative Acts is a global majority arts organization led by and centering people with lived experience of incarceration, located in Inglewood, where the Healthy Places Index value is 3.0. We use theater, poetry, music, visual arts, storytelling, and Virtual Reality as vehicles for civic engagement, healing, and disrupting the carceral system.
Creative Acts serves incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people who have been systematically denied access to the arts, using creative practice to support healing, civic power, and the radical reimagining of the lives, futures, and communities we serve.
Our impact is driven by 4 key programs.
– At the foundation, our Alumni Laboratory is our Brain Trust. A group of 20 formerly incarcerated individuals meet monthly to shape our curriculum, be in community with other past participants with lived experience, and work as teaching artists. Also, our Youth Advisory Council ensure we stay relevant and culturally appropriate.
– Our Art Attacks! Civic Engagement Program supports youth currently incarcerated in LA County Probation camps and halls. Using the arts as our driver, we enrich youth with the real history of our country, inform them of the laws and bills that directly impact them and uplift their voices through creative processes. This program has seen a 100% voter participation in the past election, up from 35% in the 2016 election.
– Our Arts and VR ReEntry Program supports incarcerated individuals in level 4 prisons with creative tools and experiences that allow them to radically reimagine their life and reentry experience. We work with adults and youth on the main line, and are the first organization to work in mean & women’s solitary confinement, and the first in a mental health solitary unit. Merging arts and technology in a 7 day intensive, participants learn ways to process, understand and transmute their trauma creatively. We have a 96% decrease in infractions and are the first program recognized as a mental health resource.
– A new Program in partnership with the County’s Justice Care and Opportunity Department allows us to support recently returned citizens with arts programming, skills training, reentry housing support (through our partners) and creative resilience. We offer this program at the DOORS South LA Center and have been able to support over 50 returned citizens in the first year.