I believe that education is powerful, can change lives, and should be accessible to everyone. Similarly, music education is not only for those dedicating their lives to music. Some of my most impactful teaching experiences have happened in the online setting of a prison.

Check out the graphics below for samples of this session, student quotes, video recording, and previous events.

Why Prison Education?

Without access to the outside world and internet, Music Appreciation is their means of escape from their current reality.

What is Music?

Students were asked to evaluate whether anything could be considered music. They found or created their own instrument/sound they would not have originally thought of as music.

Why Beethoven?

We spent a significant amount of time talking about Beethoven: we listened to a sampling of his works, and talked about his life. In the Instructor video, I read portions of the Heiligenstadt testament. I talked about how his deafness brought him to the verge of despair, and that his art held him back from ending his life. I gave them an opportunity to reflect. All chose to share how they personally deal with the losses they have had in their lives, and how if Beethoven could do it, they could, too.

 

“Inclusion: Reaching the Prison Population Through Online Music Appreciation.” YouTube, uploaded by Dr. Stacey Russell, 24 Mar. 2022, www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5z3d_onxLU.

“Thanks for trusting and encouraging me to think. Not many expect that I am capable. Thanks for teaching me ways to think more deeply about music. This is a great gift to me. I now have more ways to love not only music, but also many other aspects of life.”

— Student at Pamlico Correctional Institution

“Dr. Russell - the Music Appreciation semester and the way you teach the music courses was like a cathartic adventurous experience for me. The musical knowledge within each course took me on a journey that penetrated these walls of incarceration and freed my soul. Being that imprisonment tends to dull the sense of sight, sound, and imagination, the musical knowledge I gained from this semester in music resuscitated my sense of sight, sound, and imagination.”

— Student at Pamlico Correctional Institution

 

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