SERVING LIFE:
Revisioning Justice
SERVING LIFE is a community call and response between public audiences and the most hidden members of our society. Since 2013, Hidden Voices has collaborated with men on death rows, their families, correctional staff, and others to envision a multi-arts project able to generate the civic will to revision justice. By challenging our assumptions about guilt and innocence and by providing a vehicle for the public to connect with the actual lives hidden within an impenetrable system, we reinvigorate some fundamental questions. Who is innocent? Who is harmed? How do we heal centuries of oppression? What needs to change for our criminal justice system to reflect a community dedicated to equity and inclusion?
PERFORMANCES
SERVING LIFE ON DEATH ROW
A playwright, director, and artist walk onto death row. Two years later, six men take the stage before an audience of 80 fellow residents, officers, and staff. What transpired changed us all.
RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW
Story Cycles
From childhood experiences living with poverty, violence, and mental illness, to failed educational policies and police misconduct, to life inside prison, these powerful stories connect us to the heart of our incarcerated nation. Designed as community readings for classrooms, book clubs, conferences, and more.
COUNT
During a single day on death row, six men unpack their personal inheritances of violence, racism, mental illness, and surprising love. As we join their lively, difficult, and ultimately affirming search for a life well-lived, we begin to wonder who is disposable, who counts, what justice means, and if the blindfold is our own.
Welcome to Crossroads Correctional, where count hasn’t cleared, the families are stuck in a waiting room, and a ticking clock literally hangs on the wall.
As tensions mount, visitors and guard struggle with faith, fear, mercy, and revenge, but the situation is out of their control, and in the end it escalates to a breaking point no one could predict.
EXHIBITS
SERVING LIFE Exhibit
A traveling, interactive installation that includes Life Maps by incarcerated men, artist renderings of elements from those maps, and Virtual Reality pieces.
STANDING ON LOVE Exhibit
Portraits and reflections from family members living with a loved one on death row.
BOOK
"To read the compelling stories in these pages is to feel the birth pangs of the fundamental changes that must come...”
Rev. Dr. William J Barber
From childhood experiences living with poverty, hunger, and violence to mental illness and police misconduct to coming to terms with execution, the stories in this powerful collection offer powerful insights into our current state of incarceration. These voices invite us to consider whether our current justice system offers actual justice or simply perpetuates the social injustices that obscure our shared humanity.
coming soon: R3 (2024-2026)
R TO THE POWER OF 3
R to the Power of 3: ReVisioning Rural Reentry (R3) is a statewide, community-based collaboration using ethnography, curated story sharing, an interactive exhibit featuring portraiture and reflections, community gatherings, and restorative conversations to revision rural reentry.
We are thankful for our supporters!
