Arts in Corrections was a unit within the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation that contracted with independent community service organizations and professional artists to provide arts programs within correctional institutions. The program began as the pilot Prison Arts Project at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, Calif. in 1977 with funding provided by the California Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, the San Francisco Foundation, and the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. The success of this initial program led to the Legislature appropriating $400,000 to augment the 1981 Department of Corrections budget, establishing the Arts in Corrections unit within the department's Office of Community Resources Development. The Arts in Corrections budget initially funded a program manager, six full-time civil service artist facilitators, and contracts with professional artists as well as community arts organizations, and monies for supplies, equipment, and facilities. Over the next three decades following the program's inception, the William James Association and Artsreach (UCLA Extension) partnered with Arts in Corrections to manage the hiring, artist residency design and training, as well as the implementation and evaluation of the arts programs. Professional artists provided instruction in painting, drawing, sculpture, murals, photography, poetry, creative writing, theater, and music. The William James Association and Artsreach also sponsored state-wide competitions and exhibitions outside of the walls of the institutions. By the 1990s, Arts in Corrections had fully operational studios and placed on-site arts professionals as staff in every state correctional and rehabilitation institution in California, becoming the largest institutionally-based arts program in the United States. Due to the state's budget crisis, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation terminated artist facilitator positions at each of the institutions, concurrently eliminating the Arts in Corrections program in January 2010.
From the description of Records, 1977-2010. (University of California, Los Angeles). WorldCat record id: 732361063
