A Decade of Art, Abolition, and Gratitude

Looking Back on The People’s Paper Co-op’s Impact as it Sunsets

This year marked a decade of impact for the People’s Paper Co-op (PPC), The Village’s art and advocacy project focused on women in reentry. The PPC started as part of the SPACES Artist in Residency Program in 2014, where visiting artists lived at The Village for several months to work on projects alongside community members. Instead, the PPC evolved into an enduring project, making a difference in our Fairhill-Hartranft community and beyond.

Their organizing and public art campaigns and exhibitions have helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to free people from incarceration, support women in reentry, and educate the public about ending mass incarceration and fighting for an abolitionist future. Major publications such as the BBC, NPR, and The New York Times have covered their work, and they’ve received great honors, including the Óscar Romero Award from the Rothko Chapel and A Blade of Grass Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art.

With that extraordinary legacy in mind, we want to share the bittersweet news that the PPC is sunsetting after an incredible decade of work. We want to thank Courtney Bowles, Mark Strandquist, and Faith Bartley for stewarding this project and the many PPC Fellows, artists, and partners essential to the cause. They have been part of the fabric of The Village for so long, and we will miss them.

The PPC wrote a letter to our community to convey the significance of this moment:

This is a love note, a mountain of gratitude, and a temporary goodbye from the PPC to our friends, collaborators, partners, and abolitionist co-conspirators! It’s with allllllll the feelings that we are writing to say that after 10 years of organizing, the People’s Paper Co-op project is closing down and wrapping up.

It feels impossible to believe that what began in 2014 as a five-month artist residency at The Village of Arts and Humanities turned into a decade of work there and beyond, during which we saw so many of the things we dreamt of come to fruition.

Each spring between 2016 and 2023, we brought together a powerful group of formerly incarcerated women as part of our Art and Advocacy Fellowship. Gathering together in a small North Philadelphia storefront, the women shared food, stories, tears, and laughter, all while collaborating with artists from across the United States on a massive series of projects focused on keeping women free. Based at The Village, the PPC looked to women in reentry as the leading criminal justice experts our society needed to hear from and used art to amplify their stories, dreams, and visions for a more just and free world.

The core of this work was the Free Our Mamas! Sisters! Queens! Poster Series (2018-2024), which raised over $240,000 for the Black Mama’s Bail Out while reaching tens (maybe hundreds!) of thousands of viewers through billboards, banners, wheat paste installations, parades, events, and immersive exhibitions.

More than anything, we want not just to say, but to scream from the highest mountain a massive thank you!!!!!!!!!! This project required the hearts, brains, and superpowers of such a wonderfully diverse group of friends, collaborators, and partners (from the incredible PPC Fellows to a huge array of artists, lawyers, city officials, filmmakers, librarians, professors, and funders to name a few!). While the work we all created was beautiful, the project was, most importantly, a truly rare and powerful vehicle for building community, one based on love, shared power, justified rage, and collective dreams.

So yes, the version of the PPC you all know will be ending. But all the work, beauty, and power we’ve created will continue to live on in all the folks we’ve had the honor to work alongside, collaborate with, and cry and laugh with. Keep your eyes out for an upcoming book about the PPC’s art and activism based on our retrospective exhibition at Haverford College.

We’re unbelievably proud of the work we’ve created together and eternally grateful for the trust and relationships we have built. There’s so much we all need to keep fighting for. When you see us at the next action, please say hi!

With unending thanks and in solidarity from all of us at the PPC!

We’re honored and excited to do our part to build on the PPC’s remarkable legacy.

The Village’s Community Safety Project, which focuses on community-led, care-based alternatives to policing, could not exist without the PPC’s groundwork. Project stewards will work with Mark and Courtney to transform the PPC’s former home on our campus into a space where people in our community can connect and access critical wellness resources.

In the coming months, we’ll host expungement clinics with Community Legal Services (CLS), workshops focused on community organizing around the city budget, and a series of Know Your Rights Trainings with the National Lawyers Guild. And that’s just the beginning! Stay tuned for more details.

We also want to lift up several partners doing critical community and restorative justice work who you can contact to connect and support their work (see below). Once again, we express our heartfelt gratitude to the PPC for their incredible contributions and wish them continued success in their next phase.

Check Out Several Organizations Doing Similar Work in Philly: