RedLine is a proud partner and administrator of the Arts in Society grant. Funded through a cohort of Colorado foundations and government agencies, this collaborative program provides grants to both individuals and organizations that use art as a vehicle to promote social justice and community welfare.
We love highlighting our Arts in Society (AiS) grant recipients and all the unique and impactful projects made possible by their grant.
We’re excited continue this series by highlighting 2025 Arts in Society project: “Coalition for Creative Practice in Colorado Prisons.” Below we explore one of the three partners involved in this powerful project: Impact Arts.
Learn how Impact Arts brings visibility to the work and stories of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated artists, fosters artistic community, and advocates for the importance of the arts as a healing and transformative tool in carceral spaces.
Tell us about your organization
Impact Arts is a nonprofit organization dedicated to generating arts classes, programs, and exhibitions in and around the criminal-legal system in Colorado.
Founded in April of 2024, Impact Arts is approved as a volunteer program within the Colorado Department of Corrections. Since our inception, we've offered weekly arts and creativity classes at Sterling Correctional Facility, Territorial Correctional Facility, The Beacon at Skyline, and Arkansas Valley Correctional Facility. This spring, we’re expanding to Limon Correctional Facility and the Colorado State Penitentiary.
In addition to our volunteer-led classes, we empower incarcerated artists who wish to serve as artist mentors in their facilities by providing them with supplies and curriculum support. We’re currently running a "Train the Trainers" monthly workshop with the leaders of the Creative Wellness Team at Fremont Correctional Facility, and sponsoring xArt, a new peer-led program at Arkansas Valley.
Another critical facet of our mission is creating opportunities for incarcerated artists to share their work with the public.
In 2025, we helped produce two exciting art exhibitions: a three-man show at East Window Gallery in Boulder featuring three artists at Arkansas Valley (Hector Castillo, Sonny Lee, and Mario Rios), and a major group show, High Walls, at RedLine Contemporary Art Center.
High Walls exhibition at RedLine Contemporary Art Center. 2025.
Tell us about your first project that will utilize your Arts in Society Colorado Arts Grant
We applied for our AiS grant in partnership with two sister organizations—Unbound Authors, and ACT Ensemble. Together, we are the Coalition for Creative Practice in Colorado Prisons.
The portion of the grant funds that Impact Arts received have been used to fund our classes inside correctional facilities over the past year. In addition to covering the significant costs for art supplies, books, course packets, and other learning materials, we have been able to reimburse our volunteers for their fuel costs, commuting to facilities.
The average commute for our Denver-based volunteers is 2+ hours each way, so that expense is considerable! The generosity of the Arts in Society funding partners is the primary reason that we have been able to bring on new artists volunteers and expand our reach from two facilities in 2024 to a total of seven facilities today.
Some examples of our long-form classes have included:
Unlocking Imagination: The Art of Creative Living
Participants learn and practice wellness techniques via creative engagement with modalities like movement, arts & crafts, acting exercises, and writing
Seeing & Drawing, Inside & Out
Participants learn or build upon basic drawing skills to explore how the activity of drawing both changes how we see the world and offers opportunities for self-expression
Dessarrollando Tecnicas De Dibujo
Introduction to drawing, facilitated entirely in Spanish
Building with Brushstrokes
Introduction to acrylic painting, exploring the power of wet media and its capacity to render space and volume on a two-dimensional picture plane, while revealing each artist’s unique “hand” or style of mark-making
What’s next in the pipeline for your organization? What other projects are you dreaming up for next year, and how will your Arts in Society grant help to support these efforts?
This year, we’ve doubled our roster of artist volunteers, and we’re excited to begin a new collaboration with The Sky Inside to offer a movement-based creative program that invites participants to slow down, listen inward, and rediscover imagination through the body.
The program centers curiosity, intuition, and play as powerful tools for expression and connection. Over time, we hope this collaboration will grow into a public-facing showcase where participants can share their work with the broader community.
Our vision is to invite family members, community partners, and even state legislators into the space to witness the creativity, discipline, and humanity of artists who are too often reduced to stereotypes by public narratives about incarceration. These performances will create opportunities for meaningful encounter and dialogue, using art as a bridge between communities inside and outside prison walls.
Continuing our commitment to public-facing events, we’ll also be bringing the work of artists in our network to group shows at CrossPurpose in Denver (April) and the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities (June). These exhibitions provide important platforms for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated artists to share their work with new audiences, while inviting the public into deeper reflection about the realities of incarceration and the people who live within that system.
High Walls exhibition opening reception at RedLine Contemporary Art Center. 2025.
By centering artists’ voices and creative practices, these shows help disrupt harmful narratives and foster moments of connection that remind us of our shared humanity.
Support from the Arts in Society Colorado art grant has been instrumental in making this next phase of our work possible. The grant has helped us expand programming capacity, grow our network of teaching artists, and develop the partnerships needed to bring these projects to life.
As we move into the coming year, this support allows us to continue building creative spaces inside facilities, amplifying the work of artists beyond prison walls, and cultivating public encounters that help communities imagine more humane and connected futures.
“By centering artists’ voices and creative practices, these shows help disrupt harmful narratives and foster moments of connection that remind us of our shared humanity.”
What was your experience like when applying for an Arts in Society grant? What tips would you share with artists looking to apply?
Our Arts in Society application experience was a bit different than many organizations because we applied in collaboration with two sister organizations. Working as a coalition meant we had a lot to coordinate and many questions about how best to frame our shared work. We were incredibly grateful for the support of the RedLine staff throughout the process!
We attended the information sessions early on and found them extremely helpful, and we were encouraged to ask questions along the way. The team was consistently generous with their time and thoughtful in helping us think through how to present our work clearly.
One thing we were initially unsure about was whether it would be appropriate to apply for funding to expand our existing programming rather than proposing a brand-new “special project.” Many grant programs tend to prioritize novel or one-time initiatives, so we wondered if strengthening work that was already happening would be compelling to reviewers.
Through conversations with staff at RedLine, we learned that Arts in Society is quite flexible in this regard and genuinely interested in supporting projects that will have the greatest impact in their communities. For our organization, that meant expanding programs that we already knew were meaningful and needed.
Our biggest tip for other organizations who are considering applying would be to attend the information sessions early and not be afraid to ask questions. The RedLine team truly wants applicants to succeed and is open to helping you think through how your project fits the goals of the grant.
We found that being honest about our community’s needs, rather than shaping our proposal to match what we assumed funders might want, made for a much stronger application.
Arts in Society Grantee Project Highlight: Reframing Justice Narratives
Learn more about Brink Literacy Project and how Reframing Justice Narratives empowers justice-impacted students to find their power, passion and purpose through comic book memoirs.
Administered by RedLine and funded through a cohort of Colorado foundations and government agencies, Arts in Society is a grant program supporting cross-sector work through the arts across Colorado.
