Victoria Isaac, Natalie Derr, Ida Lucchesi, Cuauhtli Castro, “Parts of the Whole: The Body Is Home”
Mentor: Maria Gillespie, Dance
Prior research has examined the effects of punitive sanctions and institutions on individuals’ mental, physical, and emotional autonomy and agency. Incarcerated populations are processed through carceral systems perpetuating injustice, violence, and abuse, in which access to spaces of creativity, kinesthetic learning, and expression are diminished. Evidence has shown that somatic and movement education facilitates holistic development in which the body can utilize mechanisms such as body and breath awareness, rhythmicity, and community attunement to recognize and manage trauma. Our teaching practice builds upon restorative and transformative justice frameworks to support the idea that these processes may be significantly impactful for incarcerated youth at the Vel R. Phillips Justice Center by emphasizing identity affirmation, bodily autonomy, and the perception of the body as a home and haven. Through weekly movement workshops, writing activities, and online resources, we envision that students will display an increased willingness to participate in individual and group creative practices, physical and narrative actualizations, and interpersonal connections throughout and beyond their duration within the carceral institution.
We have been working on this project since late August 2020. We started with gathering information and learning from previous teaching that has been done in various environments. We talked with other people working on teaching movement classes in nontraditional classrooms, as well as learned more about the systems in place that we would be working within. In September we cemented our partnership with the Vel R. Phillips Phillips Juvenile Justice Center, and since then, we’ve been teaching different groups of students at the center, evolving our teaching toolbox as we learn more from every class. In April 2021, we cemented a partnership with the Bakari Center, and have been working to implement classes in this environment too! More information about the project can be found at http://www.partsofthewhole.org, on Instagram @partsofthewhole, or on our YouTube channel: Parts of the Whole – The Body Is Home.
Excellent presentation! You four have done a fabulous job summarizing the goals, methods, intended outcomes, social relevance and future directions! Congratulations on your thoughtful, focused work!