The inability to enter prisons during the COVID-19 crisis challenged a group of University of Michigan students who wanted to keep supporting and working together with incarcerated artists.

Living on LOP is an eleven-part weekly series premiering June 12, 2020. Check back every Friday for the next episode. This project is a collaboration among A Brighter Way, the Prison Creative Arts Project, and the Carceral State Project.

“In recent days it has come to my attention that they are housing people that has tested positive for the Coronavirus, in the unit next to me. I am steaming right now, because I am really on the verge of having to make a decision; Do I choose freedom over my health or health over my freedom…”

While we work to reschedule the 25th Annual Exhibition of Art by Michigan Prisoners, PCAP will forgo its normal prisoner art selection process. Instead, we are planning an artists’ engagement visit to every prison in the state as soon as we are safely able to do so.

Much of PCAP’s regular programming takes place inside prisons. In the current moment, when volunteers are shut out of all prisons in Michigan due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are developing a series of pilot programs that can be conducted remotely.

Prior to the pandemic, PCAP sent groups of volunteers to facilitate creative arts workshops in youth and adult facilities and in public housing communities in Ann Arbor and Detroit…