Voices Behind Walls 2014

Voices Behind Walls 2014

A Message by Lecroy Rhyanes

A few notes on 2014 so far... Since the beginning of the year, we were recognized at the J. Paul Taylor Social Justice Symposium by the NMSU Department of Government with a Social Justice Award.  In so far as web activity, we've started a new twitter handle which you can follow at www.twitter.com/vbehindw. The Spring semester at NMSU consisted of instruction with the Criminal Justice Department for a course I proposed/facilitated called The Beat Within, A Compositional History of Incarcerated Writing.  You can review some of our activities and studies at the TBW Blog: tbwnmsu.blogspot.com.  Currently preparing for a course in the Fall called Criminal Justice & Youth Outreach (CJYO), Creative Expression in Juvenile Detention.  This semester we also completed a mixtape for a VBW participant, titled City of the Crosses (a double disc).  We're currently working on a number of mixtapes for VBW eMCees and are in the process of posting our program's first instrumental project arranged a few years ago that is titled the9Album (for the 9 instrumentals that were produced during the participant's time with our group).  The instrumental project will be posted online for download.  In addition, we're working on The Gomez Composition to publish hopefully by 2015, and are staying connected and up to date with The Beat Within publications and topics.  

The website is currently undergoing updates as we start to focus updates around specific activities and initiatives, including our VOW activities (Voices Outside the Walls), and the volunteers we hope to engage through volunteermatch.org.  A lot of our needs involve taking the the content being created in workshop meetings and displaying them online.  We hope to connect with individuals familiar with graphic design, content creators, editors, etc. in the coming months.  

One final note til' the next post (which should be on a more frequent basis from now on) is our activities through the VBW Research Network.  This will act as our permanent archive for information related to our programs and others, including a referral catalog of books that are available at local public libraries and University libraries for research that is specific to creative expression, justice issues, history, and issues relevant to the contents covered in the course work taught through VBW.