The Moving Matters! Residency program brings movement-based multi-arts residencies into schools, correctional institutions and
community centers through collaborative multi-arts projects. JDPP's Moving Matters! Residencies are founded in the belief that the arts
can and do make a difference in the lives of children and adults—opening up worlds of self-knowledge and awareness, expanding cognitive
skills and providing tools for living. A particular focus of Moving Matters! Residences is to reach out to underserved populations, whether
at schools, community centers, or correctional facilities. JDPE's innovative approach integrates movement with the program participants'
own personal writings and artwork in an effort to enlarge their expressive vocabulary and consequently
improve their language and communication skills.
JDPP's school residencies are typically 12 weeks long and involve JDPP Teaching Artists going in to work with a group of learners on a weekly
basis on such topics as race, diversity, slowing down, and dream aspirations. Often the themes chosen relate to the piece JDPP is premiering
that year. We work closely with school administration and classroom teachers to ensure enhanced curricular connection with our yearly themes. We
have worked with students from 3rd through high school grade levels. Most residencies culminate in a performance or sharing.
JDPP's most noted long-term residency to date is the Moving Matters! Parkville Community School Residency, which has been in place for 15 years.
This program is a collaboration between JDPP, Parkville Community School and Trinity College, and integrates the children’s study of movement
with the language arts curriculum. Trinity College students assist the teaching artists and become special mentors, friends, and role models to the
children. A large-scale performance at Trinity College involving the children, JDPP Teaching Artists and Trinity students culminates the
residency.
This residency is coordinated by JDPE Associate Artistic Director, Kathy Borteck Gersten. “You want to see my students happy? Come here when
the dance residency is happening and you see smiles, especially from the students who find it difficult to succeed." - Parkville Community
School teacher
"Although I knew it was a show, I had no idea what to expect. Heck, even if someone had described it to me in detail I wouldn’t have really known what to expect, not of them. What came to pass was the last thing I expected - empathy, deep-aching heart-breaking empathy."A young woman from Yale happened to be working on a fellowship at York Correctional Institution the same day as our residency culmination performance. This short story about her experience that day has recently won the 2010 Richard Spears, MD, Memorial Essay Contest. Read Dr. Martin's full story, 'Signposts'...
JDPP has been working with the women of York Correctionl Institution in Niantic, CT for the past four years in a series of collaborative
residencies. JDPP's Moving Matters! residency at York CI is a collaboration between JDPE, Women of the Cross and the women of York. The
residency introduces a collaborative multi-arts approach to storytelling and performance, working with the women in movement,
autobiographical story telling and song. The residency focuses on building a collaborative arts performance piece with the women of York
that encourages both a sense of community as well as developing individual self-esteem, self-expression, and the development of skills that
can be adapted when the women re-enter mainstream society.
As with our school programs, the weekly classes culminate in a performance piece created by residency participants. Two of the past
themes women’s reflections on time and ruminations on actual dreams and dream aspirations, have been the basis and inspiration for
JDPE’s full-length performance works, Time In and Dreamings.
As our residency at York has continued though the years, more and more of the participants have completed their sentences and entered Resettlement Homes and then mainstream society. Many have expressed an interest in staying in touch with us so that they might continue to be involved in the process of creative expression introduced to them in prison. We work closely with the CPA Resettlement Home to be able to offer residency programs and opportunities for continuted involvement in JDPP performances to these women.
Through the work at York Correctional Institution, we have begun to outreach to some of the families of the incarcerated and we have seen
what an important bridge the arts can provide between family members inside and outside the razor wire. For example, children have
reconnected with their mothers, parents have seen their incarcerated children’s growth and family members have expressed pride in their
incarcerated relatives’ accomplishments. The Judy Dworin Performance Project Inc. (JDPP Inc.) has recently completed a new Moving Matters!
residency for mothers at York Correctional Institution and their children in collaboration with Families in Crisis Inc. and Central CT
State University’s Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy.
As an outgrowth of the families’ performances held during our York residencies, we observed how the arts gave families a new way to communicate. As York CI Deputy Warden Karen Oien observes from the arts work that we have done at York, “Lines of communication are opened through the arts that cannot be done anywhere else.” As a result, we began a program in which we worked simultaneously with a group of mothers at York for 8 weeks, and their children in the greater Hartford area on the theme What I Want to Tell You. This culminated in a day of sharing at the prison, and developed into a whole weekened retreat in the second year. We plan to continue this pivotal weekend experience of arts engagement each summer.
Upon completion of the pilot program for What I want to Tell You: Mothers in Prison and their Families, the children who participated in the program unanimously agreed that one of the most therapeutic benefits was simply being around other children who also had a parent in prison. So often, they hide this reality from classmates and friends, for fear of the attached stigmas. Simply knowing that everyone in the room was facing the same issues was comforting and growth producing. We now work with 3 seperate groups of children with incarcerated parents in monthly and weekly residencies throughout the academic year.
We are currently in the process of fund raising for these efforts, and a tax deductible contribution can be made by mailing a check to JDPP, or by visiting our secure online credit card donation page.
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JDPP's school residencies are typically 12 weeks long and involve JDPP Teaching Artists going in to work with a group of learners on a weekly
basis on such topics as race, diversity, slowing down, and dream aspirations. Often the themes chosen relate to the piece JDPP is premiering
that year. We work closely with school administration and classroom teachers to ensure enhanced curricular connection with our yearly themes. We
have worked with students from 3rd through high school grade levels. Most residencies culminate in a performance or sharing.
