Culture pour tous

Agir par l’imaginaire

Artistic expression helping women in the justice system

The Société Elizabeth Fry du Québec (SEFQ) and Engrenage Noir / LEVIER joined forces to create Agir par l’imaginaire, a series of ten multidisciplinary workshops (photography, video, self-portraiture, sound, spoken word, song, dance, acting) in four Montreal-area institutions—Joliette Institution, Maison Tanguay, Institut Philippe-Pinel and Maison Thérèse-Casgrain.

In the summer of 2008, Agir par l’imaginaire [taking action through the imagination] put on its first workshop, Agir par le chant à la Maison Tanguay. With Aleksandra Zajko, coordinator of the program for the SEFQ, six women inmates, a singer and a sound designer worked together to develop, perform and record six a cappella works. Between then and 2010, nine more workshops were held, each with its own special challenge and engagement for the participants.

Just one such workshop might require 30 to 50 hours of work and meetings over many weeks. The entire creative process took place with the women, beginning with a technical workshop for exploring the medium, getting to know each other and discussing the social exclusion and poverty that afflict women in the justice system—a major problem that is an integral concern of the project. The workshops were based on a consensual and voluntary approach of choosing the theme and the means for expressing it, creating the content (what the women would say and do), producing the visual or sound materials, and post-production.

The purpose of Agir par l’imaginaire was to build the women’s self-worth and help them to express an opinion or take a stance. “The learning and creative process promotes autonomy, team spirit, openness to others, self-esteem and confidence in one’s ability to create something—all elements favouring social reintegration,” explains Ruth Gagnon, Executive Director of the Société Elizabeth Fry du Québec. “While the creative process may be difficult, it’s always positive.”

The two very different organizations behind Agir par l’imaginaire are proud of this daring collaborative project that combines engaged artistic creation with the Elizabeth Fry Society’s rehabilitative goals. Established in the province in 1977, the Société Elizabeth Fry du Québec offers support and specialized services for women in conflict with the law—a clientele grappling with numerous problems, including addiction, abuse, mental health issues, criminality, poverty and homelessness. In working with Engrenage Noir / LEVIER, the SEFQ hoped to use artistic creation as one more psychosocial tool for helping these women reintegrate into society.

It is only relatively recently that the 30-year-old organization has been exploring the use of art therapy. After setting up an art studio at its halfway house, Maison Thérèse-Casgrain, in 2004-05, the SEFQ realized just how much artistic expression can help women learn to accept themselves. They therefore considered pushing the experience even further by conducting creative workshops inside the prison system, upstream of the SEFQ’s transitional and community services.

“In 2007, a number of us met about once a month to determine what form these workshops could take. We talked about what we didn’t want them to be,” recalls Ruth Gagnon. At the time, the group consisted of Valérie Décroisselle-Savoie, from the art studio; Christine Champagne, head of the clinic at Maison Thérèse-Casgrain; Bénédicte Deschamps, an art therapy pioneer who worked at Maison Tanguay; and Aleksandra Zajko, who organized documentary film evenings at Maison Tanguay and would become the coordinator of the Agir par l’imaginaire project.

They were later joined by Devora Neumark, a coordinator with Engrenage Noir / LEVIER, an organization that supports community art and creative humanist activism projects. This created a link to the arts community, enabling them to decide what kind of workshops they could offer. Engrenage Noir / LEVIER took charge of recruiting the guest artists, advance preparation for their work inside the prison system, supervision and general support for the workshops. The artists had to take an intensive five-day training course developed specifically for the project. Some ten artists served as workshop leaders or resource persons and over 50 women in the justice system were active participants in the workshops.

Ruth Gagnon congratulates the Quebec and federal correctional services for being open to the project and permitting the free expression of these women inmates, many of whom began life with a serious disadvantage or made unfortunate decisions along the way. It isn’t easy to film inside a prison, where permission is required for anything out of the ordinary, and privacy and anonymity are subject to strict controls. The institutions are concerned about their image and what might be said about them. Ruth Gagnon believes that the women were perfectly aware of their responsibility with regard to what they would convey to the public. They quickly realized the opportunity they were being given and took advantage of it to transmit a message, a liberating expression of what they had inside, knowing that their words would reach beyond the walls of their confinement.

Engrenage Noir / LEVIER has done much to let those outside the limited world of penal institutions know about this experience, notably at the Institut du Nouveau Monde’s summer school in August 2009 and the Forum social québécois in October. Two Agir par l’imaginaire participants and coordinator Aleksandra Zajko were involved in the shooting of a documentary report on the project that aired on VOX community television’s news magazine Mise À Jour in November. The episode included discussions with members of the legal profession about issues related to the judicial and prison system in Quebec. Engrenage Noir / LEVIER is also supporting a group of former participants who have formed an artist-run collective called Art entre elles. As their first project, they have published a set of cards featuring reproductions of digital photomontages that they learned to do in the workshops.

An exhibition and a publication featuring the work of the women and the artists involved in Agir par l’imaginaire is being planned in cooperation with the organization Les Filles électriques for 2011—ensuring that the positive action of this imaginative project continues into the future.