UGA students and Athens-Clarke County Jail residents explored how creativity can challenge assumptions and open new possibilities.

A student offered a gesture. The others repeated it, then added their own. Soon the class was dancing, laughing, and responding to one another’s energy.

The exercise drew on the improvisational theater principle “Yes, and”: accept what someone offers, then build on it. Over eight weeks, that idea became a way for UGA students and Athens-Clarke County Jail residents to consider how they respond to conflict and to one another.

“There is no script in life,” said Outside student, Bella, a Franklin College of Arts and Sciences senior majoring in sociology, with a minor in Latin American studies and a certificate in music business. “We might have assumptions and have read the same script, but we could just as easily take the energy and create a new script.”

The course was UGA’s 12th through the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program and its first centered on creativity. Hugh Hodgson School of Music professor Jean Martin-Williams led the class, which concluded Oct. 14 with a graduation attended by Elizabeth Weeks, UGA associate provost.

Inside-Out brings university students and incarcerated students together in the same classroom, where everyone participates as a student. UGA students do not come to tutor or mentor the residents.

“The goal is to co-create a learning environment that facilitates dialogue and an exchange of ideas,” Martin-Williams said.

Martin-Williams, who has taught music at UGA since 1990 and specializes in horn, joined the program through a faculty learning community established by Sarah Shannon, Meigs Professor and head of Franklin’s Department of Sociology. Shannon trained with Inside-Out and helped establish UGA’s relationship with the Athens-Clarke County Sheriff’s Office.

Martin-Williams completed Inside-Out’s faculty training two summers ago. The training prepared her to teach in a facility with limited internet access and few ordinary classroom materials. Those conditions also shaped the course: creativity did not depend on specialized tools.

Unable to bring instruments into the jail, Martin-Williams used poetry, drawing, and movement to explore creative practice. The class discussed music’s effects on the brain and how poetry can help people frame decisions. In the improv session, students practiced listening to the room before responding.

Martin-Williams wanted them to see creativity as an ability they could develop and use in daily life. Creative thinking can reveal different ways to approach a problem, she said, and help people navigate conflict without making someone else wrong.

For Kyren, an Inside student who enjoys writing and cooking, that meant learning to think outside the box, around it, and underneath it. Originally from New Orleans, he often spoke about the city and his hope of opening a restaurant when he returned home.

Bella watched Kyren find his place in the class. He arrived after it had begun and seemed reluctant to participate. Then his sense of humor emerged.

“He brought a light energy to the whole class,” Bella said.

Champ, another Inside student, initially enrolled because he wanted “off the unit.” By graduation, he said, he had discovered his creativity and begun to see himself differently. OG, who was taking his third Inside-Out course, described this one as having a “magical synergy.” Its many voices, he said, came together in a shared effort to learn.

Bella also entered the course with questions about lives different from her own. She was frightened the first time she went into the jail.

“I had never been in a jail before, and the things I had believed my whole life made me think it was a violent and dangerous place,” she said.

Getting to know the residents changed those expectations.

“Inside-Out breaks assumptions,” Bella said. “It breaks what you think about other people and what you think is going on with other people.”

At graduation, Weeks spoke about growing up in Athens and studying Latin American studies in college because she wanted to understand people whose lives differed from hers. She later worked in community mental health in Chicago, attended law school at UGA, and took part in the university’s public defender clinic.  

“It was so moving to spend time with the Inside-Out students and to witness the culmination of their incredibly impactful learning experience,” Weeks said.

The ceremony marked a goodbye, too. UGA students and residents cannot remain in contact after the course ends. For Bella, it made clear how much the class had built in eight weeks, even among people who might never meet again.

Shannon, who taught her first Inside-Out course in sociology nearly 10 years ago, sees Martin-Williams’ class as part of the program’s growth.

“Nearly 10 years after teaching my first Inside-Out course in Sociology, I’m thrilled to see the program grow. Jean’s class shows that this pedagogy can be transformative across disciplines, and I’m grateful for our partnership with the Sheriff’s Office that has made this growth possible.”