Prison Performing Arts uses the arts to help inmates learn the life skills that prepare them to become productive, creative, and law-abiding citizens. Prison Performing Arts is the only organization in Missouri with the specific mission of creating and presenting performing arts in correctional institutions. Over 97% of the people incarcerated in Missouri will be returning to our communities; Prison Performing Arts uses the performing arts to help prepare them for that transition.

Prison Performing Arts Programming for St. Louis Youth

Approximately 60 young men and women, ages 12-17, are incarcerated each week at the St. Louis City Juvenile Detention Center as they await adjudication.  Prison Performing Arts offers these children after-school and weekend classes, and utilizes public school vacations to provide challenging special programming.  We reach more than 1,000 youth each year

Hogan Street Regional Youth Center houses approximately 45 young men, ages 12-16, who have been convicted of a crime.   They attend school for twelve months a year and follow a rigorous counseling program that has been judged a model throughout the USA.  Prison Performing Arts adds value to the time these young men spend in custody. 

Learning Through the Arts provides year-round after-school and weekend performing arts classes for the young men and women at St. Louis City Juvenile Detention Center. Classes include acting/improvisation, Afro-Caribbean dance, Middle-Eastern dance and Capoeira.

Arts Alive! creates partnerships with performing artists in the St. Louis region to provide professional performances of music, dance, opera, and theatre to the youth at St. Louis City Juvenile Detention Center and Hogan Street Regional Youth Center.

Shakespeare on Hogan Street is a collaboration with Shakespeare Festival St. Louis.  Students at Hogan Street work with teachers from both organizations in three classes weekly, where they study and perform Shakespeare, analyze poetry and develop communication skills through the arts.

Vacation Arts provides intensive performance arts programming – classes, performances, and workshops – during school vacations at St. Louis City Juvenile Detention Center.  One example, The Spring Break Hip-Hop Poetry Project, conducts literacy-oriented Hip-Hop poetry workshops.  The student poetry is shared through a concluding performance, CD, and poetry anthology. 

Prison Performing Arts Programming for Missouri Adults

The Theatre Projects include workshops, rehearsals and live performances of classic and contemporary plays by inmates at two Missouri Department of Corrections adult prisons.  Program participants who qualify can earn two college credits each semester through Fontbonne University in St. Louis, the only college credit program available to most inmates.  The Theatre Projects give five performances each semester for an audience that includes hundreds of prison inmates and staff, inmate families and outside guests.