Prison Project Archive

The Prison Project Archive is the material collection reflecting Barrios Unidos efforts for cultural healing and social justice- transcending prison walls and establishing community with those locked behind bars. Spanning from 1980’s to the present day, the archival collection of art and other creative works grew organically. People inside prisons impacted by SCBU’s cultural education classes and other outreach began to ask for references and materials for art making. In response, the art correspondence program was born, with staff and interns at SCBU answering hundreds of letters yearly from artists inside, supplying reference images, research, and other support for their creative works. In response, the artists send their intricate drawings (sometimes colored with coffee and kool aid, revealing the creative tenacity of people denied access to basic artmaking materials) back to SCBU. The drawings and other creative works are made postcards by the staff and interns, which are then returned to the artists. This allows for the artists on the inside to share their artwork widely with family and friends. SCBU also distributes the postcards, using them to build community by giving the cards to other people who are incarcerated and making them available broadly. 

As this program has grown over the decades, the original artworks and the letters by the artists have come to form the Prison Project Archive. This archive is housed at SCBU, and has been made publically accessible through permanent displays. Additionally, works from the archive are also shown in the Prison Project Trailer, a mobile exhibition space that is a scale replica of a Pelican Bay Solitary Housing Unit. With people who have served time serving as docents and guides, the mobile exhibition trailer is taken to schools, state buildings, and community centers to raise awareness about the conditions of prisons and the people within them. Students, communities, and policy makers have had the experience of entering into the model cell and seeing the artworks and dreams of people held in similar spaces decorating the walls. The trailer was even  recently used as a backdrop to a press conference about the ban of solitary confinement in California held by Assemblymember Chris Holden.