Art can come from many different places, as the English Department will show through an exhibit featuring art created by inmates on display at Café Moro to facilitate a discussion of the U.S. prison system.

As a part of the Martin Luther King, Jr. film series, “Dreams Behind Bars,” WSU showed a film and held discussions about the New Folsom Prison in Sacramento, California.

Yesterday evening the WSU English Department hosted a screening of the film “At Night I Fly,” which takes a look at the Arts in Corrections program at California prisons for 30 years, until the mid-2000s, said Anna Plemons, Blackburn Fellow, WSU English professor and writing instructor at New Folsom Prison.

After the film, the department hosted a panel with Plemons, Carol Hinds, the secretary of the Inmate Family Council at New Folsom Prison and also a mother of an inmate, and Jim Carlson, a retired arts coordinator for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The purpose of the Arts in Corrections program is to try to bring education and an artistic outlet to the inmates, Plemons said.

“The arts are a way for (the inmates) to find their way again,” Hinds said. “The arts program is a good vehicle to attach themselves to, to find themselves and begin their rehabilitation.”

At noon today, Hinds, Carlson and Plemons will hold another panel discussion in the Bundy Reading Room in Avery Hall.

“We’ll be discussing and unwrapping the idea of the salvation narrative and the stereotypes of prison inmates,” Plemons said.

Hinds will add her side of the story, discussing with the audience what it’s like being the parent of an inmate.

“My presentation is from a parent’s perspective, how it all started, with (my son’s) initial arrest and how much his life changed and how he was helped by the Arts in Corrections program,” Hinds said.

Carlson will discuss his past as a retired arts and music teacher.

Although the art itself is not shown very much in the film, some of the art created by the inmates will be on display at Café Moro in downtown Pullman, Carlson said.

“Some of the work has been done by men in the psychiatric unit, so they were in a very high security environment,” he said. These inmates were only given paper and crayons.

“They’re beautiful,” he said.

As a part of the MLK film series, the hope is for the general public to gain a better understanding of the U.S. prison system, not the typical, theatrical, salvation stories seen in popular media like “Orange is the New Black” and the traditional prison narratives, Plemons said.

“I want to have a conversation about thinking critically about teaching in prison, to make it more respectful and accurate,” she said. “I think this is a really important issue.”

The film the English Department showed is unique in that is gives a new look at prison life. Plemons said she appreciates it because it doesn’t send the message that the teachers fixed the students, but instead it shows how the inmates helped themselves to reach better places.