From Prison Arts to Creative Futures

Alma Robinson is the Executive Director of California Lawyers for the Arts (CLA), where she oversees legal, education and alternative dispute resolution services, and leads a robust Arts-in-Corrections Initiative. California's stellar arts programs in prisons had been completely defunded in 2003. As a result of CLA’s evidence-based demonstration projects, state funding was restored by 2016 to $8 million per year. While working with arts agencies in Texas, Louisiana, and New York to expand arts programs in their prisons and jails, Alma also launched Designing Creative Futures, a program that has placed 175 formerly incarcerated people in paid arts internships. A graduate of Middlebury College and Stanford Law School, she received the Michael Newton Award for collaborative leadership from Americans for the Arts in 2021.

"In this remarkable narrative, Alma Robinson outlines a successful journey to expand public funds for arts programs in prisons and jails, building pathways for incarcerated individuals to discover their humanity as they reintegrate into society. She also draws attention to the important role of private philanthropy in seeding demonstration projects and funding sustainable programs."––Darren Walker, former Ford Foundation president and author of From Generosity to Justice“At a time in our country and in our world where hope seems far away, this wonderful book from Alma Robinson boldly shows how the powerful combination of creativity and commitment to human dignity can lead to undreamt of opportunities. This is a story worth sharing, one that can ignite the imagination of all who want to make a difference and move our world from the nightmare it often is to the dream that God has for it.”––The Most Rev. Michael B. Curry, XXVII Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church and author of Love Is the Way: Holding onto Hope in Troubling Times