Why is it important to learn about prison from people who have been directly impacted? Well, in this episode, Aimee and Kamisha share their own stories about incarceration – and what they tell us reveals a lot about community services, mental health and substance use treatment, intergenerational family trauma, and mass incarceration in our country. 

 

Aimee and Kamisha also explain how they got started making art in prison and talk about the people and opportunities that inspired them to create The Returning Artists Guild. 

Additional Resources:

Incarcerated Women and Girls (The Sentencing Project): https://www.sentencingproject.org/app/uploads/2023/05/Incarcerated-Women-and-Girls-1.pdf 

Pens to Pictures Panel Discussion (Chinonye Chukwu and others): https://wexarts.org/education/pens-pictures

For They Know Not (Aimee Wissman’s Pens to Pictures Film): https://vimeo.com/356550411 

BANG! (Kamisha Thomas’s Pens to Pictures Film): https://vimeo.com/356291769 

Story Chain (Jonathan Platt): https://story-chain.org/

Reentry Stories  (Mary Evans/WYSO): https://www.wyso.org/reentrystories

The Inside Out Prison Exchange Program: https://www.insideoutcenter.org/ 

 

Call Declined is hosted by Melissa Beck and presented by the Sozosei Foundation, a philanthropic arm of Otsuka. The Foundation’s goal is to increase access to mental healthcare in order to eliminate the inappropriate use of jails and prisons for the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness in the United States. Learn more at www.SozoseiFoundation.org. 

 

The Sozosei Foundation extends special thanks to Aimee Wissman and Kamisha Thomas, visionary artists and co-founders of The Returning Artists Guild whose creativity, resilience, and lived experience inspire us to build a world where mental illness is not a crime. To learn more about the Guild visit www.thereturningartistsguild.org.

 

Thank you for listening to Call Declined. To help us learn more about what is resonating and how we can keep creating great content, please take our short listener survey at bit.ly/calldeclined.

 

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Please note that this podcast contains mature content, including explicit language and discussions about drug use and other potentially sensitive topics. The views expressed are solely those of the participants and do not reflect the opinions of the Sozosei Foundation, podcast host or sponsors. Listener discretion is advised. This content is intended for mature audiences and is not suitable for all listeners.

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