PROGRAMS
ARTISTIC WORKS
The Healing Project’s creations take multiple forms, from music and film to visual arts. We create art that challenges our society’s reliance on criminalization and punishment as a response to harm.
In 2022, we premiered a multidisciplinary exhibition at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) in San Francisco for a 6-month run, which featured work from over 50 members of our chorus alongside a rich array of community workshops and events—all free & open to the public.
LIVE EXPERIENCES
Holistic spaces fully dedicated to healing are rare in our society. From concerts to smaller community gatherings, we build live experiences that provide a sense of safety, care, and softness for all involved—artist, audience, and staff. In these tender places, we invite people to experience what freedom sounds like and feel their way into a more compassionate society.
THE HEALING PROJECT WORKSHOP
The Healing Project Workshop is a vessel for continued and deepened partnership with select members from our original interviewee community, specifically youth and/or those who are currently incarcerated. The Workshop’s purpose is to elevate and resource their own healing and freedom dreams through advocacy-oriented projects.
2023 Workshop Participant Spotlight:
Keith Lamar
Keith LaMar is THP’s inaugural workshop partner. Keith LaMar has spent over 30 years in solitary confinement on Death Row after being framed for murder following the 1993 Lucasville Prison Riot. In YEAR, after listening to Samora's debut album The Transformations Suite, he got a call from Keith. The two became instant friends and creative collaborators. THP has since worked alongside Justice for Keith LaMar, the campaign working towards Keith’s freedom, to rally the court of public opinion in Keith’s favor. This includes securing the high profile legal firm known for winning wrongful conviction suits on behalf of the Exonerated 5 and Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter to represent Keith. In July, Governor Mike DeWine issued Keith a reprieve, moving his execution date from November 16 of this year to January 13, 2027. With new counsel now in place, Keith hopes to win a retrial in State court.
With Keith’s direction, The Healing Project and Justice for Keith LaMar have teamed up on a forthcoming documentary, a community letter writing project, and the release of SWEET—a single featuring Pinderhughes, Lamar, and Rafiq Bhatia—to spread the word and raise our voices before another innocent Black man is murdered by the State.
VISION
The Healing Project is constantly interrogating what is truly required for art to have both practical and revolutionary impact.
We are in the design phase for an Advocacy program and The Healing Project Institute, which together constitute the emerging platform for scaling The Healing Project’s impact. The Advocacy program will leverage our creative resources towards strategic partnerships that affect policy change in the areas of decarceration, violence prevention, and healing practice. The Healing Project Institute will be our organization’s physical home and a permanent community center that embodies the responses to a core question asked of all interviewees:
“If you could design a space that would contain everything inside it that you need for your continuous healing processes, what would it look like, what would it sound like, and what would it contain?”