The Alabama Prison Arts and Education Program brings the gift of education and the beauty of art to the bleakest of locations. Auburn University's involvement in this program is intensifying the evolutionary change in the lives of those in correctional facilities across the state.
This initiative was first funded by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2003.
Kyes Stevens, founder and director of APAEP, said that the program places 12-14 week class in the arts and humanities in prisons in Alabama.
"Classes are open to all interested persons within each facility that we work with," Stevens said. "Classes are structured like a college level introductory course."
The program also assists prisons to develop their general reading libraries by providing donated books.
According to www.auburn.edu/apaep, APAEP grew from one poet teaching in one prison, to a group of more than 35 writers, artists, scholars and visiting writers teaching in 12 correctional facilities in Alabama.
The number of Auburn faculty members, staff and students involved in APAEP varies by semester.
Course offerings have grown from poetry and creative writing to Southern literature, photography, African-American literature, Alabama history, drawing and other art classes.
Currently the average class-size is 15-20 students with 10 classes offered this semester.
According to the Bureau of Justice statistics of Education and Correctional Populations, more than half of the general prison population had not completed high school.
Stevens said classes are offered for CEU credits (Continuting Education Units) through AU Outreach and are funded by external grants for the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the Alabama Humanities Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Alabama Arts Car Tag fund, the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham and the Alabama Civil Justice Foundation.
"We have a wonderful partnership with the University of Alabama's MFA Creative Writing program," Stevens said. "Several of their grad students and faculty participate in the program as instructors and visiting writers."
In addition, the University of Alabama has created graduate student fellowships to support 1-2 students a semester to teach with APAEP instead of teaching their traditional college class load.
"This is a great example about how the two universities are working together to meet a need in the state," Stevens said.
The reason she started this program, Stevens said, is a long story, but when she taught her first class in a prison in the fall of 2001, she found the most impressive students.
"It was an incredible place to teach poetry," Stevens said. "My students fueled me to build this program."
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