Lori Hager would like to make one thing clear.

“I’m no expert in prison arts,” she said firmly. Yet after receiving approval for grant-funded research on prison arts programs in the United States, she may soon become one.

Hager, an assistant professor in the arts and administration program at UO, is on the research team that received a $15,000 Art Works grant from the National Endowment of the Arts to compile a database of the history, policies and programs of arts in prisons in the U.S.

The team, which also includes lead researcher Grady Hillman and collaborator Amanda Gardner, began the yearlong project in May.

“I believe in calling attention to the really excellent work that goes on in the country and doesn’t get recognized,” Hager said. “(The work) really benefits the populations that need it.”

Prison arts programs improve prison manageability and inmate behavior and offer an activity that inmates can enjoy, researchers say.

“There’s a safe space created through the art-forming process,” said Hager, who observed the prison’s “Crocheting 4 Community” group with Hillman and other UO faculty at the Oregon State Correctional Institute in 2011.

From knitting to poetry, prison arts programs include art-based workshops, projects and courses offered in correctional facilities to improve the lives of inmates. But the U.S. lacks a comprehensive resource that compiles the history of prison arts programs, along with the research that documents the benefits of such programs.

This is where Hager, Hillman, and Gardner come in.

“The database will show what we know and don't know,” said Hillman, who has more than 30 years of experience in adult and juvenile correctional facilities.

According to the grant proposal, the purpose of the research is to “compile resources on how the arts work in correctional settings and how they impact the lives of inmates, their families and their communities.”

By tracing existing evidence of prison arts programs in the U.S. since the 1930s, the team will create an annotated online resource for policymakers, social service workers and those who run prison arts programs.

“This should help inform current programs in terms of best practices,” said Hillman, “and will help make the case that the arts should be a part of correctional practice.”

Hillman is a poet, linguistic anthropologist, and community arts consultant who first entered the prison arts field in 1981. Since then, he has worked in almost every state, five countries, and more than 50 correctional facilities; he visited the UO in 2011 as a part of the visiting scholars series with the Center of Community Arts and Cultural Policy.

“Having (Hillman) here really called attention to a lot of different sectors and people that were interested in this work,” Hager said. “He kind of catalyzed this awareness of prison arts in general.”

“Lori's prestige in the field of community arts and her heft in academic research and programs provided the gravitas we needed to get this grant,” Hillman said.

- by Cari Johnson, UO School of Architecture and Allied Arts