Common Weal has been working with Pine Grove Women’s Correctional Centre for about 6 years, originating in a project with Metis writer Maria Campbell in 2004. Since that time the program has included artists of various disciplines. From 2004 to 2006 visual artist Joseph Gaudry provided weekly visual art workshops. In March 2006 educator and visual artist Carla Johnson assisted Joseph in collaboratively painting murals on the walls of the dining room with Pine Grove inmates. Carla was hired as a full time Educator/ Therapist in the Pine Grove Literacy Program opening the potential for deeper, more intensive Creative Circle programs through Carla’s assistance.
The women of Pine Grove’s Literacy class are immersed in week-long workshops with artists of various disciplines. Writer Lynda Monahan and artist Nicole Charlebois collaborated with the literacy group on a writing/ textile project, creating an intricate textile work. Songwriter and performance artist Cheryl L’Hirondelle spent a week with the women in an intensive songwriting experience producing a collaborative song. Simon Moccasin hosted an acting workshop. During the same time actor/ film-maker Marcel Petit produced a video celebrating the Pine Grove Literacy Program and its affects on the inmates of the facility, entitled “Expanding Knowledge; We’re not just chicks in grey”. Visual and performance artist Robin Brass led the literacy group through a visual art project creating “memory boxes” with various materials. Inside the boxes they put objects and notes of significance to their lives. Though the boxes are taken home with the women when they transfer out of the facility, photographs of the boxes by Eugene Capay were presented in an exhibition at the John V. Hicks Gallery.
On September 4th 2009 Common Weal held a public performance and exhibition of all the collaborative works from the Pine Grove Creative Circles Program, including a video screening of Marcel Petit's film Expanding Knowledge; We're not just chicks in grey and musical performance by Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Violet Naytowhow among others
We are currently working with songwriter and performance artist Cheryl L’Hirondelle who has been to Pine Grove for two songwriting workshops resulting in the collaborative songs The Beauty Within and The Journey Home. Cheryl has sung the songs for live audiences across the country and she's been invited to sing at halfway houses in cities she is visiting. We found songwriting works well in the institutional setting because it requires only the women’s voices and the skills they learn. Common Weal hopes to assist Cheryl in leaving the legacy of a collection of songs to honour these women’s lives.
