Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life welcomes internationally renown prison arts practitioners, Curt Tofteland (founder, Shakespeare Behind Bars, USA) and Tom Magill (founder, Educational Shakespeare Co. Ireland) for a weekend of film screenings and workshops.

Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life welcomes internationally renowned prison arts practitioners Curt Tofteland (founder, Shakespeare Behind Bars, USA) and Tom Magill (founder, Educational Shakespeare Co. Ireland) for a weekend of film screenings and workshops focusing on arts programming within prisons and in other communities.

All events are open to the public and take place Feb. 5-7 at Grace Episcopal Church, 819 Madison St., just a few blocks from the Syracuse University campus.

Since the 1960s, programs across the country, and internationally, have demonstrated the powerful effects that exposure to art and theater-making can have on incarcerated men and women, helping them to develop the critical skills and capacities to live satisfying and meaningful lives both inside and outside of prison.

Imagining America Associate Director, Kevin Bott, who invited Magill and Tofteland to Syracuse, has shown their films in his community-based theater class at SU Drama.

“I think this weekend will be an excellent opportunity for the SU community to experience the unique ways that art can help to bridge difference and to confront some of our toughest social challenges, including mass incarceration,” Bott says.

On Friday night, Feb. 5, at 7 p.m., students, faculty and other community members are invited to reflect on themes of betrayal, forgiveness and redemption during the screening of the 2005 documentary, “Shakespeare Behind Bars.” Shot in and around Luther Luckett Maximum Security Prison, viewers will embark on a yearlong journey with the Shakespeare Behind Bars theatre troupe. Led by director Tofteland, whose innovative theater work with Luther Luckett inmates began in the mid-1990s, the prisoners cast themselves in roles reflecting their personal history and fate. Their individual stories are interwoven with the plot of The Tempest as the inmates delve deeply into the characters they portray while confronting their personal demons.

On Saturday night at 6 p.m., Imagining America will screen the award-winning 2007 documentary, “Mickey B,” focusing on an adaptation of Macbeth, directed by Magill, set in the fictional Burnam Prison. This film tells the story of one prisoner’s quest for power through violence, betrayal and murder—and the death and insanity that results. The film was shot in the Northern Ireland maximum-security prison, HMP Maghaberry, and features 42 characters played by prisoners and prison staff. The Saturday screening will be followed by an audience talkback with Tofteland and Magill.

Both film screenings are open to the public with a $5 suggested donation at the door.

On Saturday and Sunday, Tofteland and Magill will lead a series of three community arts workshops, open to both aspiring and experienced community workers. Through exercises and talks developed over their combined six decades of grassroots theater experience, Magill and Tofteland will share their knowledge about the theory, practice, and ethics of community arts engagements. The intensive runs Saturday, Feb. 6., 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. and Sunday, Feb. 7, 10 a.m. – 1 p.m.

Participation in the community arts intensive is $50, which includes all weekend workshops, both films, and dinner on Saturday. Pre-registration for the intensive is required as space is limited. For more information or to register, contact Heather Ryerson at 443-8590, or hryerso@syr.edu.

Hosted by Syracuse University, Imagining America is a national consortium of more than 100 campuses committed to animating and strengthening the public and civic purposes of humanities, arts, and design through mutually beneficial campus-community partnerships that advance democratic scholarship and practice.

Submissions address alternatives to siloed, static, linear job trajectories that public scholars, designers and artists find and generate. Contributors consider ways of applying skills associated with one discipline to something else, or moving between an academic position and on-the-ground engagement.

Public is a peer-reviewed, multimedia e-journal focused on humanities, arts and design in public life. It presents projects, pedagogies, resources and ideas that reflect rich engagements among diverse participants, organizations, disciplines and sectors. Public breaks new ground as a hybrid online multimedia journal and archive, with innovative web interfaces to peer-reviewed multi-modal scholarship and creative work. To date 6,500 unique visitors from 95 countries have logged on to Public.

Public is part of , a national consortium of some 100 colleges and universities, currently hosted by Syracuse University, that catalyzes change in campus practices, structures and policies regarding public scholarship and creative practice. It seeks to enable publicly engaged artists, designers and scholars to thrive and contribute to community action and revitalization. IA is committed to the intersection of culture and participatory democracy; Public is aligned with its . The e-journal also promotes Syracuse University as a national leader in publicly engaged scholarship and practice.

Public was developed by three Syracuse University professors—University Professor and former Imagining America (IA) director Jan Cohen-Cruz, Associate Professor of Architecture Brian Lonsway and Assistant Professor of Design Kathleen Brandt—as the first e-journal to be published by Syracuse Unbound, a joint imprint of Syracuse University Libraries and Syracuse University Press. The University’s Information Technology and Support division collaborated on web development and, with Syracuse University Libraries, provides technical support for the journal’s content management systems.

In January 2015, Public will accept submissions to Vol 3, No 2, “Globally Engaged Scholarship and Creative Practice.” For more information, see , or contact the editor at public@imaginingamerica.org.