ARTIST/POET FOR THE PEOPLE
ART FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE
The "Artist/Poet for the People" Practitioner Fellowship began as a joint project of CSRPC and UChicago’s Pozen Center Human Rights Lab. It moved over to CSRPC along with the Beyond Prisons Initiative in summer 2023 with initial support from an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant that created a Centering Race Consortium across peer institutions.
Practitioner fellows complete a project of their own design that explores an aspect of the carceral system. Fellows then curate public events about their work and participate in various community and university engagements throughout the year.
This program ended in December of 2025.
Who Gets Remembered?
2022-2023 Fellows
“Who gets remembered?” was the central question of a summer 2023 culminating exhibition of the 2023-24 Artists for the People Practitioner Fellows, Dorothy Burge and Michelle Daniel Jones.
The exhibit was entitled “Makes Me Wanna Holla: Art, Death & Imprisonment.” The exhibit was a joint collaboration between CSRPC, Logan Center Exhibitions, and the Pozen Center Human Rights Lab.
The exhibit engages critical race and human rights issues by looking back at forgotten, ignored, or suppressed stories and people.
Burge presents a series of quilted portraits depicting incarcerated survivors of Chicago police torture along with quilts that pay homage to two murdered African American trans women as well as a life-size portrait of Alfred Woodfox, one of the Angola 3 who survived four decades of solitary confinement in a Louisiana State Penitentiary.
As both curator and artist, Daniel Jones presents the “Mourning Our Losses” Traveling Memorial, “We Shall Remember.” This exhibit immerses attendees in a multisensory experience of COVID-19 in prisons using sound, statistics, and the artistry of those currently and formerly incarcerated.
Truth and Beauty in the Hard Places
2021-2022 FELLOWS
In 2021, Renaldo Hudson was the Artist for the People Practitioner Fellow and Tara Betts the Poet Practitioner for the People. Renaldo and Tara's fellowships culminated in an exhibition, Truth and Beauty in the Hard Places, at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts from January 27 - April 1, 2022. The works featured in Truth and Beauty excavated the brokenness and resilience evident in our shared humanity.
What follows are artist videos from On The Real Film.
In these videos, Renaldo and Tara reflect on their time as Practitioner Fellows and describe their artistic journeys, inspirations, and freedom dreams.