What is Keeping the Faith—The Prison Project?
Keeping the Faith-The Prison Project (non-religious) is an arts-based educational residency program designed to enable incarcerated women and girls to discover a sense of identity and to develop that identity within the context of community--through the vehicles of performance, video documentation and a published anthology of their writings.
The Pat Graney Company has conducted this three-month program of movement, writing, and visual art in Washington State Corrections Centers for over twenty years. Each year, the program culminates in performance of the women’s own movement, writing, and visual art for 100 members of the general public as well as for over 300 of their incarcerated peers and prison staff. Keeping the Faith creates a rare forum for cultural development among incarcerated women by facilitating the exploration and expression of both individual and collective identity.
This project has been conducted at a number of locations. These locations include:
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Echo Glen Children’s Center and King County Juvenile Detention Center in Washington
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Washington State Corrections Center for Women
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Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women in Washington State
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FCI Lowell and FCI Broward in Florida
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MCI Framingham in Massachusetts
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Excelsior Girls School in Denver
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Houston City Jail
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Red Rock Juvenile Center in Maricopa County, Arizona
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Shakopee Women’s Prison in Minnesota
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Estrella Jail in Phoenix, Arizona
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River City Correctional Center in Cincinnati, Ohio
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Tokyo Girl’s Detention in Japan
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Bahia Women’s Prison in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil
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Munich City Jail in Munich, Germany
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The Dochas Centre/MountJoy Prison in Dublin, Ireland
Help Support Keeping the Faith
Keeping the Faith–The Prison Project serves women in Washington State Prisons through dance, expository writing, visual art and performance. This program has been conducted in Washington State Prisons since 1995, and has served over five thousand women in prison.
A donation of $100 can sponsor one person to participate in the Keeping the Faith program, and goes a long way towards allowing each woman to explore the issues that led to her incarceration.