Impact Arts is a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to generating arts classes, programs, and exhibitions in and around the criminal-legal system in Colorado. We bring visibility to the work and stories of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated artists, foster artistic community, and advocate for the importance of the arts as a healing and transformative tool in carceral spaces.  

What We Do

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What We Do ---

  • We offer in-person, visual arts, performing arts, and other arts instruction to students incarcerated or formerly incarcerated in Colorado.

  • We support incarcerated artists who wish to serve as artist mentors/teachers in their facilities by providing art supplies, curriculum support, and outside feedback to their students.

  • We Identify and create public exhibition opportunities for incarcerated artists, so that their work, stories, and perspectives may be shared with a wider audience. 

  •  We advocate for the value of arts programming and creative practices in the lives of incarcerated people as a tool for surviving the hardships of prison and growing within them, a means of retaining a sense of personal agency and purpose, and an instrument for building healthy community. 

Art work credits:

Sonny Lee, Tomorrow’s Hope, 2023

Mario Rio, A Fish Tank for My Fish, 2023

  • We foster public awareness about our interconnection with and responsibility to Colorado’s incarcerated community by reconnecting us to our shared humanity.  

  • We serve as a resource and intermediary for other like-minded organizations in our community by providing them with connections to interested artists and students. 

  • We build public awareness of and direct critical attention to the system of mass incarceration in Colorado and the United States more broadly.