The Art of Problem Solving

Youth violence in New London is a situation that has many people wringing their hands, but on Sunday panelists participating in a community discussion on “Taking Positive Risks: Arts and the Underserved” at had a number of creative solutions.

The discussion was spearheaded by Judy Dworin, founder and artistic director of the Hartford-based Judy Dworin Performance Ensemble, who has extensive experience in this area. For two decades, Dworin has offered performance arts programs to underserved children in Hartford schools. Six years ago, after a chance meeting with author Wally Lamb--who was running a writing program for the women in York Correctional Institution--she decided to bring her arts program to women inmates and their children too.  

Dworin aims to give voice to the voiceless, to encourage people to tap the “potential to empower the self … to reclaim lives lost in a sense of helplessness.” She’s seen firsthand what happens when the women she works with begin to find new ways to express themselves through writing, song, and dance. “It can be the foundation for change,” she says. As part of the process of rehabilitation, she adds, it gives them “a real chance to make it on the outside.”

Dworin says she is often struck by how much progress women make once they finally find their own voices. But their children, she notes, are “the most at risk of the at-risk.” Statistically speaking, without intervention and social support, children who have a parent in prison are much more likely to end up behind bars than their peers. “I had only the streets,” said a boy Dworin works with, whose father is in prison and whose mother is not a part of his life. “I’m trying to change who I am.”

“Having a parent in prison is most of these children’s best kept secret,” says Dworin. “We, as a society, have an obligation to these young people to reduce the obstacles they face. We can and we must provide the services [they need.]”

Children with a parent in prison may be at greatest risk but they’re not the only ones whose parents are missing in action. As panelist Lonnie Braxton, senior assistant state’s attorney noted, there are plenty of kids who come home to an empty house because their parents are working three jobs to keep a roof overhead. He recalled that New London once had a midnight basketball league to give kids who had nowhere else to go a safe place to hang out but it got nothing but bad press as a waste of tax dollars and ultimately closed.

“Kids are the canaries in the coal mine,” says Braxton. “They copy everything they see and they magnify it. If we want a better world, it’s up to us. It means paying attention and being a real role model. If we don’t, we will pay and I don’t think we’ll like the costs.”

“We need a place for young people to go, open 24 hours a day,” said panelist Leigh Ware, who works as a parole manager. “If we do that, families will go too.”

Panelist John Pescatello, who formed the New London Anti-Violence Organization following the tragic death of his friend Matthew Chew, echoed the need to create a safe place for young people to go and hang out 24/7. “I’d like to encourage everyone to talk to your neighbors, make connections,” he says. “A lot of parents really need help too.”  

Mourning the loss of children turned out to be a common theme of “Time In,” a performance piece that included dance, songs, and spoken word pieces created by women incarcerated at York Correctional that was presented by the Judy Dworin Performance Project after the discussion at Mitchell College.

The performance included true stories of abuse at the hands of step-fathers and husbands, descriptions of how women in prison marked the passing of time through photos of their children growing up without them, and ended with the women's hopes and dreams for the future.  

The show ended with a final thought: “I don’t know what the future will bring but I do know that without the belief that people can change, there is no hope. Let there be hope for all of us.”