Exploring Creativity Workshops
While leading Talk To Me classes, the facilitators discovered that the women were often speaking for the first time of devastating experiences, family secrets, and ugly wounds from childhood abuse. The experience of telling sometimes left the entire class vulnerable and shaken. The leaders of Talk To Me prayed and sought counsel, and a new idea surfaced: Bring creative arts into the prison! Using expressive arts is a time-honored way to release pain and express despair without harming oneself or others.
Now Truth Be Told brings in volunteers to lead Exploring Creativity Workshops for inmates. Leaders vary from storytellers to singers to visual artists to dancers - to quilters and yoga teachers and writers.
An annual workshop teaches inmates to create art for greeting cards. Truth Be Told will sell the cards they make, turning over the money raised to a nonprofit benefiting children of inmates. In this way, inmates will be doing service work, contributing to the community, and possibly gaining some entrepreneurial experience.