Creative Acts Changing the Prison System

  📍 📍 Today I'm talking with Sabra Williams and Major Bunton of Creative Acts. Sabra, can you start us off and introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what Creative Acts is doing in spatial computing?

Yes. So I'm very excited and happy to be here. I'm Sabra Williams. I am a an actress and an activist and I'm also Co-founder and Executive Director of Creative Acts.

We are a social justice arts organization. We seek to transform urgent Social Justice issues through the revolutionary power of the Arts and Tech and center the voices of people who are or have been incarcerated.

We were finalists on the National Justice Innovation Prize at SOCAP last year. So very exciting times.

Oh, my goodness. I'm already so impressed. I can't wait to hear more Major. Can you do the same? Can you introduce yourself and give us a little bit about what you're doing in spatial computing?

Sure. So my name is Major Bunton. I am the Director of Programming for Creative Acts. I come in with lived experience. What we mean by that is that my former incarcerated experience is a way for us to further to work in these spaces that we work in. I'm a teaching artist as well.

And we work in these spaces because we believe that everyone deserves a second chance.

  📍 📍 Thank you both for being here today. So one of the things that I just love to talk about  everyone who's working in AR and VR has this like aha moment where they get hands on with the technology, something about it makes a personal connection and they're changed, they're convinced.

So I'm curious Major, starting with you could you tell me about your XR origin story? What was your first experience that opened your eyes to the powers of spatial computing?

Yeah, I would say you know, as a teaching artist, as a formerly incarcerated person, you know, I came home to a, to a world that was un unknown to me.

So we had an opportunity to work in solitary confinement for the first time. We're actually the first program in solitary confinement.

And that was a moment that we were really able to really channel the VR XR component and use it in a way that really helps people acclimate themselves before they even, come home. And that was a aha moment for us because we didn't realize the hope that it created.

We really wanted to bring them, we wanted to bring the world to them, and we didn't realize that it was creating hope and that these individuals start to see themselves in a different light. And they wanted freedom.

They wanted change. They wanted to be in a place that they can change their, their self-identity, their cause and the factors they had been through. And VR gave them an opportunity to do that.

And so we're just excited what it holds for the future and what we're, where we're headed at, and how we can continue this work as we move forward.

You've got me, like, stopped in shoes. The idea of taking VR into solitary confinement using it to help people vision their future after incarceration just sounds, transformative and, and amazing. I thank you for sharing that idea with me. Sabra How about you?

Do you have a, an origin story in XR?

Well, yes. Thank you and thank you Major.  I've been bringing arts programs into prison for about 18 years and have really seen the power of the arts in prison and in the social justice space.

But we were like super frustrated hearing people coming back after life sentences or multiple decades inside.

And obviously when they went in everything was analog and like Major said, if you imagine you're like taken off the planet for 30 years and then dumped back. Everything is computerized, right?

People cannot do anything, and so people, when they came home without any preparation, just felt like this world wasn't for them and went back to prison. So we were looking for a way for a long time of how to bring the outside world.

Inside and heard that VR has the effect on your brain as if you've had the experience. So we thought that this would be a great use of tech, right?

So we are really a Web3, a developing Web3 program, and we decided to use virtual reality to make content about daily things.

So we convened with people inside while they're still incarcerated, and then when they're, when they're returned and asked them. What are your biggest stresses? What are you most worried about?

And it was things that you probably wouldn't even think twice about pumping gas, checking out the supermarket, choosing from a, a menu computers, phones, job, interviews, even dating.

And so we went and made VR content of all of those things, loaded them on the Oculus headsets that Meta kindly gave to us, and then mixed it with travel. 'cause our folks have never traveled, and took that into solitary confinement.

You know, the place where nobody sees or goes to and saw absolute transformative change.

We have an average 96% drop in in prison infractions when people do this program. So the way that it works, I know it's crazy, right? We didn't even know that it was gonna have this effect.

It's a public safety program, basically is what it is. So it prepares people to come home better. It prepares people to come out of solitary, onto general population, yards better. It helps 'em radically reimagine their lives. A lot of people step down from their gang after they've done the program.

And the way the program works is we do seven days consecutive. It's super intensive, four hours a day, every day for seven days, and the first thing they start with is a trip to Thailand. Because our folks have never been off their block.

So they go on this two minute trip to Thailand, and usually when they take off the headsets afterwards, they're crying because they're like, I didn't know the world was beautiful. I never thought the world was for me.

And you know, we actually had one young guy who's who was a. Low lowest level of his gang, who he said, every time I go on the yard I'm told to do all these things that get me in trouble that I don't really wanna do, but I have to do them.

But he said, now I've seen Thailand. When I've reached this crossroad on the yards, I'm gonna see it like Thailand or trouble.

And he said, and I'm always gonna take Thailand from now on, which was just like such a simple but beautiful. Thing that that was just one. The first piece they see was just change this person's life and not just him.

And then if you can imagine, our folks in solitary are in man sized cages the size of a phone booth, and they're flying out of their, on virtual reality on this tech that many of us think of as just for gaming. But it's not just for gaming. It's a life changing application that

when you mix it with the arts, 'cause what it does is it stirs up emotion and then also they have the trauma of being incarcerated. And so when they. Get to see this. And when they take off the headsets, then we use theater, poetry, painting music, and even dance to help them to transform the emotional outcomes of what they see.

So it's deeply impactful. The prisons love it because it lowers, you know, infractions and violence, and our folks who participate love it because it's life changing for them.

'Thailand or trouble.' I'm, I am, I'm literally speechless.

They, you have these like big gang guys with tattoos all over their faces and they are getting misty too. I mean, they're straight out crying just from the beauty of the world.

To know that the world is beautiful, like for that to be a, a novel, I, you know, something that you've lost touch with and can reconnect with because of VR experience is like,

Yeah. Or they've never had, they've never had

that because they've lived in survival mode their whole lives because of where they live and the lack of resources and access that they have. Yeah, it's been, it's been a revelation for us as well. And for the prison, the prisoner, like they started off giving us like, you know, guys who were moderately violent or difficult, and they've ended up giving us their most difficult guys with the most infractions in the whole state.

And then what they've done, which is super moving to us, is that they've commuted their solitary sentences. So people have been there 10, 12 years in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day in their cells after they do our program. The warden has so much faith in it and in them and their change that she allows 'em outta solitary and back onto general population.

That's when we knew we had something. At that time, we really knew we had something that was a game changer because, you know, to get these individuals to, to take another path, you know, of righteousness, it is so difficult to do that in that kind of environment.

So we were so shocked, like how it really started to create like this new idea of how they look at themselves, how they look at the world, people and things of that nature. And we're still, every time we come in, we, it's, it's always a moment. We always get a aha moment. We've been in there like six times now, and we always get a aha moment. Rather, it's the fifth day, it's the fourth day, the third day, you name it, something's gonna come out.

We're, we're gonna recognize somebody in that class that was holding on, resisting all this stuff that he was, he had bottled up, and then all of a sudden they just freely let go. amazing. .

You're showing people the world. You're transforming the prison system. and you're, you're giving, you're giving hope wow. Thank you so much for sharing that story and , for giving those details.

I have to imagine that folks are going to be so interested to hear more at your talk at AWE this summer.

This is our 15th anniversary year, and we're seeing a number of breakthrough moments in technologies.

I'm curious, is there a breakthrough in XR that you're working toward in your work?

  Yes, there's several breakthroughs. One is that, you know, as most people know, filming content is extremely expensive.

So one of the things we learned when we were Justice Finalists at SOCAP, was that the, world of tech hasn't really has changed its narrative around the Arts and tech, especially in the Social Justice space.

So one of the breakthroughs we are looking for, and we'll be speaking at SOCAP as well this year, is to change the narrative around the Arts and Tech, particularly XR in the Justice space is one of the things. We also want to move our virtual reality program into young people's, environment which Major can talk about.

But one of the things we want to do is to gamify our content, which again, is extremely difficult and expensive. I dunno if you wanna talk about that Maj.

 Sure. So we we work in six juvenile halls in California. We use the arts where we want to enhance the VR in that space. And so we're trying to figure out like how to, gamify it, things that will allow the kids to interact more but also create solutions.

Through conflict resolutions and things of that nature through this process, because we know that kids are gamers, we know that they have shortage attention spans, and so we're trying to meet them halfway.

How do we do that? We know that XR and VR is a, is a proper tool to do that. So we're trying to figure out this whole process and we're onto some good stuff right now. We just. Lock it in where we know that we can really go into these juvenile halls and make a change.

We've been in these juvenile halls for the last, probably about three or four years, and we do a civic engagement program that we use, and we teach 'em about mass incarceration.

We teach 'em about the importance of voting. We teach 'em about how their voices matter in these spaces, and a lot of these kids come back to us when they come home and join our program and become alumnis and things of that nature.

So this is what the, the big picture is for us at Creative Acts as we move this VR component into the future.

It seems like people are gonna be really interested to learn more about your mission, this work that you're doing, and some of these pains that you're looking to get around.

Who should come to your talk at AWE and what are you excited to share with the, the audience at AWE??

 I personally think that anyone who wants to understand the potential that VR or XR has to make actual, real tangible change in the Social Justice space should come.

I hope that we can meet visionaries, spatial computing experts. We definitely need tech support because we are working in a place where we have to use the Oculus headsets, sideloaded. Because there's no internet in prison and we are having a lot of tech issues with it.

Plus they're in metal and they're in a space where there's a lot of headsets in the same small space. So we have a lot of tech issues. So I would love us to be able to meet experts to help us.

Obviously impact investors because you know, part of our changing the narrative is for people to change the narrative about how they can benefit by investing in something like this.

People think of investing as this a quick return, but we do get returns. They're just not as quick and you have to re-envision what the returns are.

So a safer society, people better educated to come home and be in the workforce, for instance, which is also what we're doing. So, you know, investors, impact investors, innovators and we are really excited to share. ways that VR can be used and XR can be used that haven't been considered before.

And so I guess really we want to find people who are excited to expand their vision of what's possible in the world, in the tech world. And we would like to find partners who can support and advise us.

I'll just say visionaries. I think that's the most important part. You know, we've been in a lot of spaces where people share the same kind of work that we do, but not in the same space.

And I think that is the goal for us at Creative Acts is to get, people that will take the time to hear us out and understand the importance of this work that we do.

Because we're trying to help the communities and make a safer space, safer place in the communities and let alone in different states.

That's our overall goal is to move into other states. We're in California right now, and I know for sure that this work works. I'm a prime example of that, you know, after the lifestyle that I chose as a young man, I come home 2018, I've changed my life.

I have a better place of mind to focus my, my thoughts on now opposed to what it used to be in the past. And it, it, it is a tool that we can utilize in any institution across the state lines. And I'm a prime example of that. It works if you know how to work it.

So I hope visionaries can really come to really understand why we believe in this work, why we understand this work, and they give us a chance to kind of show them how we can propel this work further in the future.

Yeah. And if there, you know, a lot of people talked, a lot of talk in 2020 about equity, about, you know, lowering the barriers of entry to tech. This is how you do it. I mean, imagine one of the things we'd like to create is a tech lab inside a prison. Which I know that the prison system in California want, but we need somebody to invest in that.

So instead of our folks, when they come home being behind everybody in terms of tech, which is why we started our program, they could actually be ahead and they could be coders, they could be VR content makers, because people who are in prison, there's so many brilliant.

Brilliant creative people who are in prison, which is why a lot of people end up in prison 'cause they don't have the support for as for that. So if we could do that, that is how you invest in equity and in you know, lowering the barriers to access to tech.

Would add to that, that we have built several partnerships with several institutions across California. We just don't have the the money to, to, to be in all these prisons. We can only, we're in three prisons right now. If we had investors that can come in, we can have a team in each one of these prisons doing the programs that we do, which is our seven day intensive, and we can serve more people. And that's the goal.

And it's also an employment support, right? So we employ people who are formerly incarcerated to go back in and be the teaching artist as credible messengers. That's, you know, that is a massive amount. Of people who could have work, and we have interest from across the country and internationally who want the program, let alone all the prisons in California that wants it.

So it's actually a really, it's really gonna change the landscape if we can get people to support us in, you know, all the ways that people need to be supportive.

I, I love how you called out, even an innovative company with a proven product can't do something at this scale by themselves and there's probably systemic and bureaucratic change. There's probably some governmental support, there's probably some technological and private sector support that you would need to really see this mission through.

But when you have. An average of 96% you know, impact that you're changing lives on such a scale that you're making communities safer. Seems like it, it would be a miss not to step up, up, you know? So hey government of bureaucracy, private industry. Let's step up.

Well, actually, interestingly enough, the prison system is investing in this for us, and the government is investing. So are some foundations. The missing piece is the tech world.

Who, like I said, talk a good talk but have not been investing. This is a black led majority, local majority organization with the majority of people with lived experience of the system who are now working and creating value back in that system. It's majority women. I mean, it's everything that people say they want, but they have to support it.

Because, and not only is it all of those things, people say they want. We are changing the culture in the prison system and the, even the prison system itself recognizes it.

Yes, I'm, I'm gobsmacked. I am inspired. I can't wait to meet you in person in Long Beach.

I would just say that I just kind of want to emphasize the fact that. Arts and Social Justice and Arts and Tech are boundaries that require a culture shift in the understanding of the Arts in this country.

Because in this country we view the Arts as entertainment or for artists.

A lot of other cultures recognize the Arts as essential to being fully human as medicine, you know, for humanity and you know, to. It's an urgent change of narratives that tech also understands and comes to support. 'cause we're not teaching people how to be artists, right?

We are not making more artists, or some people do become artists. We're using the tools the arts provide to help to transform trauma, change behavior, radically reimagine the world.

And you know, could the tech industry and the Web3 world, could they. Understand that we are using the tech that they've created and, you know developed for the people at the edges, right?

How can the tech world, how can we expand the Web3 movement to be inclusive to people who not only need it the most, but have the least access and can offer the most to it?

So that's you know, we are gonna be asking these questions I think in our talk.

And I would add to that,

I hope you would add that is that arts changed my life in 2016. That was the first time I got a chance to experience Art. Sabra was my teaching artist when I was incarcerated.

And gave me an opportunity to understand the power of the arts. And when I got a chance to understand the power of the arts, I started to question some of the things that I was struggling with while I was, while I was incarcerated.

And I noticed that I struggled with my emotions. I understood that anger was the only emotion that I should use in prison, and I had desensitized my emotions and I never used happy, sad. Fear, it was not something that you showcase in that space.

And when arts came in there, they gave me an opportunity to be free and open and live in these spaces and these different emotions to be more human and to be more prepared to come home to know that these emotions that I'm talking about are all at the same level and I have full control of them.

And that was the, that was the bottom line that really gave me an opportunity to really go in. And prepare myself for an opportunity to come home.

And that was the, the revolving door that I had to break, you know, those, those habits that I had.

And it opened up , a door of freedom for me. Now I'm in. I'm in the world today and I can feel comfortably and I can understand that my emotions are part of who I am and I have full control of them. And that is the reason why the art component is so important because we can give them the VR all we want . We can teach 'em all these traveling experiences. We can teach 'em all these daily experiences, right?

But if one is not understanding their emotions and understanding how to properly manage those things, then what does the VR do?

It does anything for them. It does nothing for them. So that's the reason why we talk about these two components coming together because they don't, one, one feeds the other

When we, when we, when we allow someone to come home and change their lives.

And that's the, that's the reason why we're so big about using these two components in these spaces here.

So I just wanna share that with you 'cause I know that that is something that we've learned how important it's in this space that we work in.

, I am so thankful that this is how I got to end my week. This week I am inspired and, I'm. Thankful for the work that you're doing, and I'm, I can't wait to see this session. At AWE. Honestly, thank you both.

Sabra Williams, Major Bunton is an honor and a pleasure, and an inspiration to talk with you today.

Can't wait to see your session at AWE in Long Beach in June. Thank you so much. Have a fantastic day.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for having us in this space and allow us to kind of bring this work that we do on a big stage, and congratulations on your 15 years, you know, of working in XR and in VR, in this, this important space that is moving the world in a different direction.

We can use this in a powerful way once we start to get, you know, the people behind us.

 And if anyone's thinking of, should you come and listen to us or not, I promise you you'll be inspired. You'll be asking new questions and you'll see XR through new eyes, promise you that.