PCAP’s Work in the COVID-19 Crisis

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. Each artists’ engagement visit will consist of at least one visual art workshop where participating artists will create a new piece with the direction of our curators. These workshops will allow artists to experiment with new techniques and learn from the artistic practices of their peers and our professional curators. Artists will also be invited to bring a previously completed piece to the workshop where they can discuss it with PCAP curators and receive feedback.

We are also working with PCAP participants through the mail to collect written testimonials about their experiences of the pandemic, what their personal arts practice has been prior to and during the crisis, and whether their relationship to PCAP and the arts has an impact on how they cope with the stress and trauma of their present circumstances. These testimonials will be archived in the University of Michigan Library as part of the Documenting Criminalization and Confinement research initiative, in which PCAP is a partner with the University of Michigan Carceral State Project. They will also help shape PCAP’s developing programming for the duration of the time that volunteers are shut out of physically entering prisons, which may last for many months after the crisis ends.

Join us in paying tribute to University of Michigan’s most recent PCAP graduates. Spring Celebration 2020 It’s not going to be the graduation ceremony they had imagined. Instead, it is a "pandemic" celebration. Still, the 18 PCAP graduates have a lot to celebrate and be thankful for. By Fernanda Pires