Finding Hope Within – Museum Exhibit at Rokeby Museum Featuring Art From Students at MCI-Shirley and North Central Correction Center

Guest-Curated by John Vincent, A Revolutionary Press

2023 Special Exhibit, August 10–October 14, 2023, part of regular admission

Concord Prison Outreach was invited by John Vincent of A Revolutionary Press to help curate the Finding Hope Within exhibit, currently on display at the Rokeby Museum in Ferrisburgh, Vermont.

Finding Hope Within features art that has emerged through the Carceral system. It combines art made by incarcerated artists in facilities in Vermont, Massachusetts, and Maine—from poetry and other writings to visual art and sculptural pieces—and art made collaboratively between incarcerated artists with non-incarcerated artists on the outside.

This exhibition posits art making as a transformative, healing, and cathartic practice and highlights the intensely human instinct to create as a way to transform one’s relationship to community, to the environment, and to the self. A spark of hope for the future emerges through the art of creation.

Featured in the exhibit is artwork from students at MCI-Shirley and North Central Correctional Institute (NCCI), made possible by Marie LeBlanc of NCCI,Tressa Stazinski of Mount Wachusett Community College, Ellie DiMauro of Concord Prison Outreach, the Education administration at MCI-Shirley and NCCI, and John Vincent of A Revolutionary Press.

Co-curators of the exhibition include Heather Newcomb of Vermont Works for Women, Ashley Messier of Vermont Women’s Justice and Freedom Initiative, Olivia Hochstadt and Jan Collins of Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition, Ellie DiMauro of Concord Prison Outreach in Massachusetts, and Laura Carey of the New England Innocence Project.

We highly recommend that you take the opportunity to visit the exhibit, as it promises to be a truly enriching experience!