arts & abolitionist futures

arts & abolitionist futures engages with collective, creative, imaginative work to highlight partners Abolitionist Futures– a grassroots collective engaged in political education to build capacity for futures less reliant on criminal punishment. At present, the organisation is working on digitising the archive of The Abolitionist which was a 1980s journal by the ‘Radical Alternative to Prison group’.

We are bringing together Abolitionist Futures’ organising collective with artists in Leeds, centred around those with lived experience of the impacts of prison (on individuals, families and communities). Our core organising team includes ally walsh from the School of Performance and Cultural Industries (PCI) artist in residence in prisons, poet and student Dalton Harrison as co-organiser and facilitator, with support from Eve Ryan (organiser with Abolitionist Futures). We also have UG student Phoenix-Leigh Griffin as a workshop facilitator.

We are running public workshops using arts processes to explore some of the issues in the publication The Abolitionist – introducing ideas to those new to abolition as well as those who may want to bring in creativity and collective imagining into their organising. Our first workshop was held in December 2023 with University of Leeds students, exploring personal connections and everyday experiences of punishment; understandings of harm and accountability and offered a short intro to abolitionist imagination. We drew on fantastic resources from US based Project Nia (2020) Against Punishment: A Resource by Project NIA and Interrupting Criminalization as well as materials from Abolitionist Futures.

We aim to produce a series of impactful posters as well as a public sharing with other creative projects related to transformative justice in Stoke.

For more info contact Prof ally walsh: A.M.Walsh1@leeds.ac.uk