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Publishing Their Sentences
Beyondmedia Education collaborates with under-served and under-represented women, youth and communities to tell their stories, connect those stories to rest of the world and organize for social justice through the creation and distribution of media arts.
Beyondmedia's Women and Prison programming supports formerly incarcerated women and their families to voice their stories through the arts. Engaging their issues and experiences to create opportunities for dialogue, healing and community organizing, Beyondmedia has collaborated extensively with formerly incarcerated women and girls since 1998.
Based on their award-winning video series documenting the lives and stories of America’s incarcerated women, Beyondmedia created a public video installation and companion website entitled Women and Prison: A Site for Resistance. While the exhibit and site successfully engaged viewers outside prisons, Beyondmedia wanted to reconnect with the women inside by giving them a voice through the tangible media of a print.
what we didAs the client and project chosen for our first ever Camp Firebelly design charrette, we introduced Beyondmedia and the Women and Prison Project to 10 of the brightest student designers from around the country and gave them one week to research, brainstorm, design and produce a collection of stories from women behind bars.
Aside from the many technical limitations imposed by the prisons themselves (i.e. no hard covers, rigid spines, spiral binding, etc.) the zine’s only legitimate requirement was to create something as engaging and honest as its related DVDs, website and installation.
Under our guidance and art direction, the students worked tirelessly and collaboratively to understand the intricacies of the prison industrial complex and create a digest in which women could share their stories in an authentic, meaningful and humanizing way.
Research started the very first day with a trip to Beyondmedia’s studio to screen several of the organization’s documentaries and speak with two formerly incarcerated women. The students also heard from Lara Brooks, one of the Midwest's youngest activists involved in the prison abolition movement. After several brainstorm sessions, the students titled their project (Writers’ Block: The Voices of Women Inside) and began designing for complex content ranging from drug-addiction and prostitution to poverty, racism and homophobia.
The end result—a compilation of deeply personal narratives, visceral creative writing and provocative scholarly essays—was supported by a promotional poster and postcard; with printing generously donated by Salsedo Press and Delicious Design League.
By helping make the issues of women prisoners more visible, the students expanded Beyondmedia’s efforts to challenge the criminal justice system and work to end the cycle of crisis it creates for women and their families.
projects included:- 36-page zine
- poster
- postcard