Living on L.O.P.
“Living on L.O.P.: What We Learned in Prison” is a video series initiated by formerly incarcerated artists Patrick Bates and Cozine Welch which reflects on this comparison. In collaboration with the Carceral State Project, A Brighter Way, and the Prison Creative Arts Project, this video series features the stories of formerly incarcerated people who share the lessons they have learned in prison that can now help us all adjust to life during the pandemic.
About the Artists
Patrick Bates is a Community Researcher for the Documenting Prison Education and the Arts and Confronting Conditions of Confinement teams on the Carceral State Project. After spending his life inside correctional facilities across the state of Michigan, Patrick came home to change a pattern of systematic slavery and death by incarceration. He has worked on several projects with various organizations based on reforming and abolishing a system of which he was a victim. The advocacy groups with which he has worked include the University of Michigan Carceral State Project, #UMBehindBars, Prison Creative Arts Project, and American Civil Liberties Union.
Cozine A. Welch, Jr. is a formerly incarcerated poet and educator. His work has been featured in The Michigan Quarterly Review, Plough Quarterly, the Periphery and eleven consecutive volumes of the Michigan Review of Prisoner Creative Writing, where he served as Managing Editor. Cozine is also the former co-instructor of the Atonement Project and the Theatre & Incarceration courses at the University of Michigan, classes that focus on restorative justice, reconciliation, atonement, and the role the arts play in healing and rehabilitation. Since spring 2020, Cozine has served as the executive director of A Brighter Way, a 501(c) nonprofit that focuses on providing mentorship and wraparound services to those formerly incarcerated in Washtenaw County. He has continued to serve the clients at A Brighter Way throughout the pandemic.
