Responding to a Carceral State with a Vision for Transformation
The Maine Inside Out Creative Ensemble performed a short version of “Broken Clock” at TEDxDirigo in Portland in November. Watch the performance here.
Reflections from Maine Inside Out Leadership
In this time of rapid expansion of a carceral state, we begin the year with determination by announcing a new Three-Year Strategic Plan and organizational structure at Maine Inside Out (MIO).
In January 2024, we (Chiara, Joseph, and Noah) became Co-Executive Directors of MIO. Previously, we had worked closely together in MIO’s inside and community programming since 2017. Over the past two years, we have led a strategic planning process in collaboration with staff, partners, and community members and with support from incredible advisors at Firebrand Cooperative, The Bridgespan Group, and Water’s Edge Consulting. The goal was to create a strategy and organizational design that will support MIO to be durable, to scale, and to respond to a changing landscape. This planning was done in addition to ongoing work with system-impacted youth and adults and large-scale programming projects such as the “City That Carries Us: Pain, Streets, and Heartbeats” Juneteenth Festival in 2024 and the “Broken Clock” performance tour in 2025. The Three-Year Strategic Plan and organizational design are the culmination of two years of dedicated and intentional work.
The updated strategy supports our goal to work from our base in Lewiston to build multiple generations of theater programming with incarcerated adults, adults who are in re-entry or system involved, and youth who are at risk of system involvement. As part of this strategy, Noah is stepping into a new MIO Program Director role in our new structure designed to amplify leadership, maintain MIO’s culture of teamwork, and increase MIO’s operational and programmatic capacity. Joseph and Chiara will remain MIO’s Co-Executive Directors. Learn more about the MIO staff team roles.
In this moment, immigration enforcement surges in Maine, Minnesota, and elsewhere are a rapid expansion of the carceral state and explicitly target immigrants, system-impacted people, and people of color. For years, MIO has practiced methods of advocacy and care that are necessary for creating safety and working towards systemic change within a carcel system. This includes coordinating mutual aid, supporting system navigation, uplifting the voices of impacted people, and facilitating public dialogues that address complex social issues with grace and inspire social action. In this moment of crisis, we continue to do this work and lean on our experiences and strategic plan to respond with creativity, care, clarity, and action.
All of this is rooted in our vision of transforming a culture of isolation and punishment to one that thrives in connection, dignity, and community-led accountability.
We welcome opportunities to talk in depth about this work - please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Chiara, Joseph, and Noah
Current MIO Projects
We are excited to share some of the MIO projects underway:
Creative Ensemble
With the start of the new year, the MIO Creative Ensemble will have some new faces! We held “open play” sessions throughout January, inviting current and past MIO artists to play improv games and connect across generations. A newly formed ensemble will begin developing a new play in February in preparation for spring performances. This group has a lot of excitement for creating a play and using theater and community dialogue to respond to the crisis of this moment.
MPAC/MIO collaboration
Maine Inside Out and the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition are deepening our collaboration this year, with pilot programming bringing together peer support, artistic expression, and policy change to provide people in re-entry with opportunities to support one another, build community, and engage with local civic issues. Together we are facilitating weekly re-entry meetings with a statewide community of system-impacted people ages 18+. In our initial meetings of the year, there has been vulnerable sharing and support, and enthusiasm for ways that this partnership can have an impact.
Youth Theater Workshops in Lewiston
MIO is committed to continuing to respond to public calls from Lewiston teens and from youth organizations in Lewiston to continue building and deepening partnership to support youth creativity and leadership. MIO is planning for youth theater workshops with several Lewiston-based partner organizations as we kick off the year.
Maine Inside Out artists played together on stage during our December open mic at LA Arts in Lewiston.
Thank You For Your Support!
Our community of supporters showed up strong at the end of 2025, donating nearly $60,000 to support MIO’s work going into the new year. From all of us at MIO, deep gratitude for this solidarity and belief in the power of our collective work.
