Freedom & Captivity Launch Party
Join us at Fox Field at Kennedy Park in Portland on Thursday, September 2nd for an evening of community, art, and abolition!
During the event, there will be projections from the Art on Abolition online exhibition alongside ‘Songs of Freedom & Captivity,’ a mixtape curated by @blamueljames. There will also be speakers, organizations tabling about their work, and ample opportunities to get involved as Freedom & Captivity celebrates this 3-month initiative across the state.
Speakers will include Marcia and Daniel Minter of Indigo Arts Alliance, Skye Gosselin of Maine Youth Justice, Bobby Payzant of Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition, Michael Kebede of the Maine ACLU, and performances by Ali Ali and Myles Bullen.
Tabling organizations will include the Maine ACLU, Maine Youth Justice, Maine Inside Out, Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition, Maine People’s Housing Coalition, the Maine DSA and Maine Access Points.
Gateway Community Services will be offering COVID-19 vaccines and testing on-site!
Organized by Indigo Arts Alliance, Maine Youth Justice, and the Freedom & Captivity coalition.
As part of this launch, SPACE is pleased to publish the Freedom & Captivity Calendar Zine, featuring many of the events and exhibitions occurring this fall. A PDF version is available to download here. SPACE members will receive this zine program guide with their September calendar mailing.
Freedom & Captivity is a state-wide public humanities initiative during Fall 2021 to bring critical perspectives from the humanities to the interrogation of incarceration. Recognizing that mass incarceration is fueled by racism and profit-generating mechanisms that tear apart communities and families, the project offers opportunities for public engagement about imagining prison abolition and the redirection of resources toward community investments, the repair of racial and gender injustice, intergenerational trauma, and eldercare for the aging population in Maine’s prisons. The project, which includes art exhibitions, workshops, webinars, a podcast, research and creative production, public education materials, and linked courses taught across Maine’s campuses, aims to cultivate opportunities for imagining freedom in an abolitionist society. The project is conceived with the participation of people in Maine directly impacted by the carceral system.
More information and an online exhibition launching September 2nd on the Freedom & Captivity website.