COMMUNITY WORKS

CW engages youth and adults in arts and education programs that interrupt and heal the far-reaching impact of incarceration and violence by empowering individuals, families and communities.

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JAIL ARTS PROGRAMS

Community Works Director Ruth Morgan developed the nationally renowned San Francisco Sheriff's Department Jail Arts Program in 1979. Since founding CW as an independent nonprofit in 1994, Morgan has continued and expanded Jail Arts programming, bringing a diversity of artists in a wide variety of disciplines into the San Francisco County Jail and post-release facilities.

Only the Dead Can Kill

A Community Works/West collaboration with Margo Perin

WOMEN'S REENTRY CENTER

RSVP: Resolve to Stop the Violence Project
The San Francisco Sheriff's Department's Resolve to Stop the Violence Project (RSVP) is an innovative violence prevention program in the San Francisco County Jail and at post-release facilities. Recognizing that violent criminals cause harm not only to their victims, but also to their communities and to themselves, RSVP is based on the principles of Restorative Justice: offender accountability, victim/survivor restoration, and community involvement. As a service provider for RSVP, Community Works provides offenders and ex-offenders with expressive arts programs, education programs covering such issues as parenting and substance abuse, and case management. CW also provides a variety of empowerment programs to victims/survivors of violence, both in jail and in the community.

For more information, please visit the websites for RSVP or Sunny Schwartz.

THE ISSUE, a collaboration between Community Works and RSVP, is a quarterly magazine created by and for inmates of County Jail #7 and the RSVP community at large. A forum for offenders, survivors, staff members, and others involved in RSVP, THE ISSUE features news, resources, stories, and artwork, and welcomes contributions of all kinds. To submit to, or learn more about, THE ISSUE, please email .

		Soapstone Theater Company Soapstone Theater Company is a groundbreaking performance troupe that brings together ex-offenders and survivors of violence and allows them to tell their stories. Under the direction of Professor Roberto Gutierrez Varea, Soapstone members develop and perform original theater pieces. Past productions include (Un)common Ground, Boxing With Ghosts, and Mission: Possible, an installation that combined visual art and theater to tell participants' stories. In 2000, Soapstone began an exciting collaboration with the University of San Francisco's Performing Arts and Social Justice departments in which students and Soapstone members collaborated to produce a modern-day adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's The Good Person of Setzuan and, most recently, 2004's *Cracking the Safe*. Soapstone productions have been performed at notable venues throughout the Bay Area, including San Francisco's Lorraine Hansberry Theater and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The troupe also performs ongoing "pocket" performances in non-traditional venues around the Bay Area, including schools, jails, juvenile halls, and churches. To inquire about booking Soapstone, please call Community Works at (510) 486-2340 or email .

One Family, a Contact Visiting and Parent Education Program in San Francisco County Jails
In June 2008, Zellerbach Family Foundation awarded Community Works a grant to work with the San Francisco Sheriff's Department to expand the scope of parent/child visits throughout the San Francisco jail system. Click here to download the One Family information sheet (pdf).

Artist Residencies
CW frequently brings individual artists into jail and post-release facilities for long- and short-term residencies in theater, writing, and other artistic disciplines.

Current Project: Families and Prisons Project, with artist Evan Bissell

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