Impact Arts is a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to generating arts classes, programs, and exhibitions in and around the criminal-legal system in Colorado. We bring visibility to the work and stories of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated artists, foster artistic community, and advocate for the importance of the arts as a healing and transformative tool in carceral spaces.
What We Do
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What We Do ---
We offer in-person, visual arts, performing arts, and other arts instruction to students incarcerated or formerly incarcerated in Colorado.
We support incarcerated artists who wish to serve as artist mentors/teachers in their facilities by providing art supplies, curriculum support, and outside feedback to their students.
We Identify and create public exhibition opportunities for incarcerated artists, so that their work, stories, and perspectives may be shared with a wider audience.
We advocate for the value of arts programming and creative practices in the lives of incarcerated people as a tool for surviving the hardships of prison and growing within them, a means of retaining a sense of personal agency and purpose, and an instrument for building healthy community.
Photo credit: Nico Toutenhoofd
Photo credit: Kyla Fear, Fearless Photography
We foster public awareness about our interconnection with and responsibility to Colorado’s incarcerated community by reconnecting us to our shared humanity.
We serve as a resource and intermediary for other like-minded organizations in our community by providing them with connections to interested artists and students.
We build public awareness of and direct critical attention to the system of mass incarceration in Colorado and the United States more broadly.