Clare Hammoor Interview continued:

IOA: What skills have you called on the most when working in prison settings?

CH: People talk about how we need to be more resilient. Often there is language about being more resilient.. how u should bounce back and just keep going. And that’s what comes to mind first to me around being inside is this need to be incredibly resilient but but rather than it necessarily meaning that I have to keep bouncing back or doing it that way it has helped me think about resilience as softening into my friend tara reinders says its about :softening into the experience” rather than push forward d bounce back be harder and be better every time  and so Ive learned about how to soften into the moment and be the  person who needs to be there then and often that’s not the express purpose of why I came that day. Like I knew that wasn’t the class we were supposed to have or the rehearsal we need to have or the art project we were supposed to have but I have just learned so much about ways I can better be more present for the people that are there and that’s not just there but everybody in my life because there’s also somethingan=mazing about being inside where there’s no phone, no computer ni internet, there’s no way for people to contact me. . there’s not this buzzing at me all the time like even when I’m teaching there’s something about being incredibly present and then be able to soften into whatever comes up that day. I think I’ve called on that or tried to work at growing that myself.

IOA: What are some of your favorite personal experiences from your work inside of prisons?

CH: I could talk forever about that. There’s a mini documentary that was made We did a production of a xmas carol, the dickens story. We did it all with women at temper women’s maximum security prison and we were able to bring 30 of them to the public which is the first time that we really know of ever happening where women of that security level were able to go and actually be in the public  we have 500 seats int he theatre like a full round theteare production. That’s the  high level of that but all the tiny moments in there that were so transformative for people those are super highlights I think. There;’s a another video I can send to you. Also that time guys and I did together at  territorial     that’s the oldest prison in the west and the warden came and asked if I could create something to commemorate the prison or celeb rate the prison. And I was like well We’re not going to celebrate the prison but we could talk about having a retrospective. We discover one really powerful story about that facility and were able to actually film part of the project in the death house which is where people were executed and spent their last nights in Colorado where the death penalty was still active.

IOA: can u talk a little about your sojourn journal and how it has affect the people you work with

CH:, yes, so Sojourn came about with this guy Andrew draper who’s incarcerated and he and I worked together on it the point of it happening was one of these moments of necassiet bc of covid. So people inside were locked down essentially all the time —23 hours — they could go out to shower and make a phone call and that’s it.  So what wee wanted to do was come up with a way that we support folks in the really awful space. So I wrote the prompts and sot=rt of did the overall like here’s the kind of journey that I imagine the journal wants to go and then drew and I talked about it and all the illustrations he watercolored all of them throughout the journal. He helped with placement and layout and all that stuff and so we were really lucky to be able to do that during covid over google meets. He’s in amax sec prison it was anuge deal that we were able to do that. We printed over a1000 copies and gave them away inside to folks during covid

IOA:

CH: