Mission
The Kite facilitates creative writing and storytelling workshops for incarcerated youth and adults detained in NYC’s jails and prisons. We believe that telling our truths has the power to heal ourselves and those around us and that finding our voice can set us free. We strive to create safe spaces on the inside, and support systems on the outside, for students to rehabilitate through the arts so that they can reinvent futures devoid of police contact.
We dream of a day when our jails are run by passionate teachers who are capable of helping court-involved individuals heal and break the cycle of trauma, poverty, and systemic oppression, rather than be further traumatized by the dehumanizing conditions perpetuated by mass incarceration. Toward that end, we are laying the foundations for the prison-to-college pipeline and are currently working with CUNY to offer dual-credit courses to our young people detained in NYC’s pretrial detention centers.