Tell us about you and Dance To Be Free:
My name is Lucy Wallace. I Founded Dance To Be Free 3 years ago after getting my Master's degree in Psychology. Our mission is to change the lives of incarcerated women through the healing power of collective dance.
Dance To Be Free offers 3-day 12-hr teacher trainings to a dozen participants at a time where the inmates learn how to teach each other and sustain the program themselves.
This peer-to-peer lineage is sustained while they complete their sentence and for when they return to their community. http://dancetobefree.org/ is now in 8 States and 13 prisons which involves monthly travel.
Michelle from Denver women’s maximum security correctional facility
Tell us about your Travels.
Just travelled to Ocala, FL to work at the largest womens' prison in the country. Generally we travel to not the most desirable destinations so being surrounded by horse ranches was serene and nourishing. It's the horse farm capital of the world; all this open land, Spanish moss dripping from the trees.
Which éclipse Product did you take with you?
The Solstice shawl, when driving, is so convenient to prevent sun exposure on my hands.
Sarah from Nebraska's maximum security correctional center for women
What’s the next trip (prison) on your list?
We are going to Nebraska for the 6th teacher training which is where I will wear my eclipse shawl for the 6-hr drive. By working with the forgotten and the refused, teaching them how to teach each other and helping people leave the survival mode, they can return to a creative place that is healing and beneficial for women and the institution as a whole.
Given that since 1980 the rate of incarceration for women has risen more than 700% and the majority of these women are in prison for non-violent offenses, we are traveling around the country and training those women in an effort to change those statistics.
Have any good travel tips and tricks you’d like to share?
Getting TSA pre-checked instead of standing in line. That makes it faster and easier. We went to the airport on a random week day. It only took 5 minutes to apply.