Reforming Arts Incorporated (RA) was a 501(c)3 organization formed in 2010 to provide liberal arts education to people under carceral control in Georgia’s women’s facilities. We began with one instructor teaching theatre in 2009. We added additional instructors and subjects in 2012. In 2014, we established the Certificate in Theatre-Infused Liberal Arts which included a capstone production. We developed the reentry project in 2013 to support our alumni and expand public discourse about mass incarceration. We launched a partnership with Georgia State University Prison Education Project (GSUPEP) to provide college credits in 2017. Reforming Arts (now changing its name to Creative Becoming) was forced to shut down all programs, based in Georgia women’s prisons, during the pandemic. The forced hiatus was both a bane and blessing: no in-prison programs for two years, but also time to pause and take and reflect on what we’ve learned through the in-prison program.

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An irreconcilable contradiction became apparent during this time: despite its efforts to provide healing from trauma, the prison-based model cannot address people’s trauma while they are actively living in a traumatizing and dehumanizing system. Because we were in a prison system those dysfunctions were more pronounced and easier to recognize. It became clear that the binary systems and pedagogy we were living and teaching from were false. For example, good/bad; self/other, and male/female. 

 

To address these realizations, Creative Becoming accepted a new mission, adopted a new name, and seated four new board members to join the four already in place. A team led by Wend wrote a new curriculum, designed to  serve a broader set of clients, and the organization adopted new vision and values statements. Creative Becoming stepped beyond the prison confines to evolve into a publicly available resource for healing trauma.