TITLE: Futures in Freedom. Integr-Arte Space.

Funder: Valencia City Council
Total budget: €24,560
Grant amount: €12,280
Start date: 01/12/2022
End date: 01/09/2023

"Futures in Freedom. Integr-Arte Space" is an initiative born with the aim of offering inmates at the Antoni Asunción Hernández Penitentiary Center in Valencia a safe space for exploration, expression, and personal transformation through art. The program is structured in biweekly or monthly group sessions that combine artistic techniques, memory exercises, self-awareness dynamics, and tools from the Theater of the Oppressed, all within an open and multidisciplinary methodology. This process, supported by professionals with experience in artistic and psychosocial intervention, creates an intimate environment in which to channel thoughts, emotions, and life stories, promoting an encounter with oneself and others from a respectful, playful, and participatory perspective.

Throughout the project, participants develop several collaborative short films based on the experiences and ideas that emerged during the workshops. They themselves create the narrative, select the stories they wish to tell, and assume different roles in the development of the final product, from writing to performing. The creative process brings into play skills of collaboration, critical reflection, subjective expression, and collective construction, with a cross-cutting approach to gender, diversity, and inclusion. This promotes awareness of the values of equality and respect, and encourages the active participation of people who, for various reasons, are often excluded from the dominant social discourse.

Once the short film is completed, the project plans to screen it both within the facility itself, with access to more inmates than those who participated directly, and in external cultural spaces. The screenings are accompanied by spaces for reflection on art in contexts of deprivation of liberty, the process experienced by the participants, and the transformative potential of collective creation. One of the key venues for this dissemination is the Humans Fest – Valencia International Film and Human Rights Festival, which annually hosts productions with strong social content. The project, highly valued by the prison for its human and artistic quality, not only seeks to reduce the stigma associated with the inmate population but also to generate connections between the realities within the facility and the cultural and social fabric outside, opening up new possibilities for recognition, participation, and dignity through art.

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