Introductory Certificate in Community Healing
About The Certificate
Students received hands-on experience in co-creating learning communities that cultivate critical thinking, social analysis, self-awareness, collaboration, exploration of creative solutions to social issues, appreciation for diverse perspectives, dialogue across differences, and strengthen relationship building both inside and outside the jail. As both the learner and practitioner, students discuss themes essential to community healing such as spiritual activism, personal narrative, lived experience, justice, social change, love, artistic expression, abolition, restorative justice, healing justice, mindfulness, and body-centered practices.
Through learning labs such as facilitating peer-led book discussions, facilitation of sessions, leading class discussions, facilitating opening and closing rituals and the like, students are exposed to ways of being that repair harm and meet multiple community needs. Additionally, students will dialogue with and learn from system impacted practitioners to create a vision of community healing for their unique circumstances.
Through These Bars & Art and Spiritual Activism: Reimaging Preaching for Public Ministry
In the Summer of 2022, Jia Johnson, SBI Director and Adjunct, invited the Honorable Hakim Dough to collaborate in co-developing a workshop series on art and activism, using black music and songwriting as a way to transmute the indignation, rage and grief caused by injustice into an outlet for creative expression.
In this workshop entitled “Through These Bars: Liberation, Healing and Transmutation”, incarcerated students at the Cook County Department of Corrections, engaged in a hands-on process of self-creation and artistic expression through art as a means of
therapeutic release, bonding/relating with others and liberating one’s self and others through their own imaginative faculties.
As their final project, they co-created their version of protest songs using Resmaa Menakem’s concept of compassionate agitation in My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Pending our Hearts and Hands. Compassionate agitation is an intentional way to bring to light the social conditions that create injustice with the purpose of healing the wounds caused by oppression.
The songs were premiered to the public at the Through These Bars: A Behind the Wall Listening Party. The audience engaged in a generative conversation and co-created themes in response to what they heard. The evening was led by Jia Johnson, Richard Wallace, Alonzo Waheed, Lis Valle, PhD, and virtually led by The Hon. Hakim Dough.
The “Through These Bars” workshop was a pilot for what would go on to become “Art and Activism: Reimaging Preaching for Public Ministry. Learn more about this course here.
Take A Listen
Attention, Attention
"Attention, Attention" was written by Leroy Lewis; and recorded/performed by the Honorable Hakim Dough.
Leroy is currently incarcerated and a student in the workshop "Through These Bars" offered by McCormick Theological Seminary's Solidarity Building Initiative, a program of higher education in jail. He was unable to record/perform the lyrics he produced in the workshop.
Students’ works displayed on SBI’s website are published under a signed creative works release from each student.
Attention, Proletarian
“Attention, Proletarian" was written by 100kpaudemar, Masun Mageo and Emmanuel Garcia; and recorded/performed by the Honorable Hakim Dough.
The writers of this song are currently incarcerated students in the workshop "Through These Bars" offered by McCormick Theological Seminary's Solidarity Building Initiative, a program of higher education in jail. They were unable to record/perform the lyrics they produced in the workshop.
Body-Centered Practices for Community Healing
Body Centered Practices for Community Healing is a 10-week learning lab, designed as a train-the-trainer model. Students learn the practice of facilitation in Holding Change by adrienne maree brown and participate in peer-led facilitated
discussions using My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem. Students explore the assumptions, bias, traumas and experiences that lead to racialized violence and how to begin to heal from racial trauma through body-center practices that move us towards a more just society. At the end of the course, students are invited to practice in co-facilitating a book discussion on their deck with their peers. Every week students co-lead the opening ritual, community agreements, and co-facilitate the group discussions with their peers on the assigned reading.
TAKE A PEEK INSIDE THE CELEBRATION CIRCLE
Celebration Circle led by Jia Johnson, MA, Rev. Lis Valle, PhD, and Quintin Williams, PhD
Student Interviews
Students share what they have learned from this course and how they view themselves as community healers.
Students’ works displayed on SBI’s website are published under a signed creative works release from each student.
Healing and Justice Conversation Series
This 12-week learning lab course entitled Healing and Justice Conversation Series is part of the “Introductory Certificate in Community Healing”. Through dialogue, praxis and reading of selected passages from the primary texts Love and Rage: The Path to Liberation through Anger by Lama Rod Owens and bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions, and additional selected readings, students ask rigorous questions such as how do we understand justice? How do we know love? What is community healing? How do we understand Lama Rod Owens 7 Homecomings as a vision for community healing? A primary goal for the learning lab is to acknowledge the transformative power of anger for individual and social change. As both learners and practitioners’, students co-facilitate opening and closing rituals, mindfulness practices, community agreements and check ins/outs.
The Healing and Justice Conversation Series was launched as a pilot partnership between Harvard Radcliffe Institute and McCormick Solidarity Building Initiative (SBI) and co-created by Jia Johnson and Kaia Stern, Prison Studies Director and first practitioner in residence at the Radcliffe Institute. With mutual commitments to work alongside grassroots organizations, we have partnered with Alonzo Waheed, director of organizing at Equity and Transformation (E.A.T), a formerly incarcerated led grassroots organization and Collette Payne, director of the Women’s Justice Institute Reclamation Project to co-facilitate the workshop with us.
Students’ works displayed on SBI’s website are published under a signed creative works release from each student.
Student Scholarship from the Healing and Justice Conversation Series
We celebrate the brilliance of our student scholars while aiming to change the harmful and toxic narratives assigned to people behind bars.
We invite you to be inspired and activated to join us in changing the narrative.
Daniel Mageo a student in the Justice and Healing Conversation Series, his final project is based on the 7 Homecoming mediation in the Lama Rod Owen's book Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger - pg 1 of 3
Daniel Mageo a student in the Justice and Healing Conversation Series, his final project is based on the 7 Homecoming mediation in the Lama Rod Owen's book Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger - pg 2 of 3
Daniel Mageo a student in the Justice and Healing Conversation Series, his final project is based on the 7 Homecoming mediation in the Lama Rod Owen's book Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger - pg 3 of 3
A letter to facilitators from Daniel Mageo
Marcus Starky was a student in the Justice and Healing Conversation Series. His final project is based on the 7 Homecoming mediation in the Lama Rod Owen's book Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger. pg 1 of 1
Certificate Teaching Team
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The Hon. Hakim Dough
Teaching Artist
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Jia Johnson
Co-Facilitator
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Rev. Lis Valle, PhD
Co-Facilitator
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Alonzo Waheed
Co-Facilitator
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Richard Wallace
Teaching Artist
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Quintin Williams, PhD
Co-Facilitator
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Christophe Ringer, PhD
Co-Facilitator
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Kaia Stern, PhD
Co-Facilitator
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Your donation to SBI can help us continue to break down the barriers that incarcerated individuals face. Your support will help provide access to higher education in carceral spaces, giving our learners the chance to thrive despite the challenges they face.
By investing in SBI, you're investing in the future of our community. Together, we can work towards creating a more just and equitable society. Your contribution will make a real difference in the lives of system-impacted individuals and their families.
