Keeping the Faith - The Prison Project

You can now help support Keeping the Faith- The Prison Project online with Paypal! It is a safe and secure way to donate with your credit card or debit card.

" …one of the nation's most innovative (programs) for prison inmates."
--The New York Times

"This is one of the first major accomplishments in my life. This program takes a bunch of convicts and allows us to be productive, socially accepted, figures of pride."
-- Participant, Keeping the Faith

Keeping the Faith-the Prison Project (non-religious) is an arts residency program designed to enable incarcerated women and girls to discover a sense of identity within themselves 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 two-month program of movement, writing, and visual art at the Washington Corrections Center for Women for the past seven years. Each year, the program culminates in performance where the participating women perform their own movement and writing, and display their own visual art for 200 members of the general public, 500 of their incarcerated peers, and the prison administration. 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.

In 2000, the Company embarked upon the National Model of Keeping the Faith, which expands the Washington-based residency to reach incarcerated women across the nation. The National Model is a multi-year program that will occur in four cities from 2001-2004. Incarcerated women participate in a condensed, two-week version of the Keeping the Faith residency outlined above, and in addition, the Keeping the Faith Artist Team assists local artists in creating their own version of the residency, thereby encouraging the continuity of programming in each locale. To date, National Models have been conducted in Cincinnati, OH (presented by Contemporary Dance Theatre) and Tempe, AZ (presented by ASU Public Events).

The number of women in state and federal prisons increased 386% from 1980 to 1994, roughly twice the increase in men's imprisonment. At the same time, funding for programming within prisons continues to be cut. In 2002, the Women's Prison Association found that over 70% of women in prison have experienced sexual and physical abuse prior to incarceration. Most of these women are poor, educationally disadvantaged (41% have less than a high school education), and young (50% are age 24-34). Additionally, 64% of incarcerated women are African-American, Latina, Asian, Alaskan, Pacific Islander, or of other non-white racial/ethnic identity. In the Company's 2000 Keeping the Faith Washington State residency, 80% of participants were racial/ethnic minorities, over 90% were from low-income families, and over 70% identified as sexual minorities.

In 2002, Keeping the Faith was funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Horizons Foundation, US Bank, NW Stone Soup, The National Performance Network, Corporate Council for the Arts, King County Arts Commission, the Washington State Arts Commission and through the generosity of individual donors.

If you would like to support Keeping the Faith - the Prison Project,
you can make a tax-deductible contribution by the following methods:

By Mail
Make check payable and mail to:
Pat Graney Company
1419 S. Jackson St. Studio 11
Seattle, WA 98144-2099

By PayPal (credit card/debit card)
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