Looking Back at our 2017 Spring Arts Festival

Art heals, transforms, and inspires lasting change. We know this personally— for 50 years, Fortune participants have benefited from the spaces of creativity we provide. In recent years, we’ve made concerted efforts to strengthen our Creative Arts program, in the hopes of giving justice-involved individuals as many ways to uncover untapped potential as possible. Our Spring Arts Festival is a showcase of some of what we offer each year. In 2017, for the fourth year in a row, this month-long celebration of our creative spirit emphasized music, drawing, animation, dance, performance art, creative writing, and film as key conduits to successfully community reentry.

Enjoy highlights below, and consider helping us continue to lead others to paths forward through creative expression.

Fittingly, The Fortune Society founder David Rothenberg kicked off this year’s Arts Festival with a personal welcome. David was inspired to form The Fortune Society in 1967 after producing the off-Broadway play Fortune and Men’s Eyes. Justice-involved individuals who saw the play were then led to share their own stories during after-performance discussions. 50 years later, art continues to help individuals express themselves. One such individual is Guy Woodard, a masterful artist who uses ballpoint to create hyper-realistic portraits. After experiencing incarceration, he is now a Fortune art teacher. In his popular class, he shows Fortune participants how to draw self-portraits and images of possibility-filled futures. On opening day and for the duration of the festival, beautiful examples of student-created work decorated our walls.

Still, at Fortune, a ballpoint pen can create both portraits and paragraphs. Jamie Maleska, our Creative Writing teacher, helps students see power in the written word. Through prose, poetry and autobiographies, students bare their souls. The results can be heart-wrenching, dramatic, and even comical. On opening day, we shared some of what they wrote, captivating the audience with creative wordplay.

Key partners like The Animation Project help widen the breadth of creative opportunities we offer. Through them, participants learn how to craft nuanced stories using 3D animation software. During this year’s festival, students in the partnership’s latest class semester shared the final collaborative film they made, Finding Your Voice.Another partner, Mark Morris Dance Group, helps participants tap into their unique rhythms through hip hop dance. Music and movements liberate repressed joy, leading all who join their classes to uncover new ways of using their body to communicate hope and dreams. At our Spring Arts Festival, during the class showcase, audience members and dancers alike couldn’t help but sway to the beat. Even John Runowicz, Fortune’s Manager of Creative Arts, joined in on the fun!

Through their Public Works initiative, longtime partner Public Theatre invites our participants to travel to new worlds and take center stage. By rehearsing then performing classic pieces from iconic playwrights, stars are born. At our Spring Arts Festival, Public Theatre staff members and Fortune participants performed scenes from August Wilson’s Seven Guitars together. The story’s recurring themes of humanity, connection, and incarceration provided powerful emotional pulls that all could resonate with.

Within their Road Trax initiative, Road Recovery guides members of our ATI (Alternatives to Incarceration) program through the process of bringing original songs to life. Over keyboards, guitars, drum, and electronic beats, professional musicians and Fortune participants tell honest stories of survival and perseverance. Lyric by lyric, they see new possibilities for their voice, and new ways to thrive in their communities. The sessions of the program’s first group ended with a special concert during our Spring Arts Festival. Voices soared and guitars wailed, with each note heard and felt as a clarion call to free expression and personal success.

Unfortunately, finding success is even more challenging when one has experienced solitary confinement while incarcerated. Performance artist and writer Charlie Hinton explored this and more during his one-man show, Solitary Man. Centering on visits with individuals at Pelican Bay State Prison, Charlie provided an evocative glimpse into the struggles of those subjected to this torture, strengthening the demand for continued criminal justice reform.

Another unique glimpse into the world of justice-involved individuals was offered by activist Donna Hylton. In her documentary A Walk to Freedom, Donna details the abuse that tarnished her childhood, the path that led to justice involvement, and how she’s now able to be an inspiration to others. After the eye-opening documentary, Donna was on-hand for a short Q&A session, giving more insight into why justice-involved individuals should not be defined by their mistakes.

Though our Spring Arts Festival has ended, the show still goes on. Creativity has long been an important part of our organization’s history, and will continue to play a key role. As a way to heal from difficult pasts, rediscover and reclaim identities, and advocate for needed reform, we will keep using it to help justice-involved individuals access hope.

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