Welcome to Art Portal

We are a community of artists who participate in the Creative Arts Program at The Fortune Society, in New York City.

The Creative Arts at Fortune is more than a program — we are a community.

The Fortune Arts Community activates the restorative and transformative capacities of art, art-making, and radical joy to build community and imagine and advocate for future freedoms.

Our Core Values ground & guide us

We believe in the power of ARTS

“A people’s art is the genesis of their freedom.” —Claudia Jones
The arts in all forms provides potent, accessible, proven ways to personal and collective healing.

We believe in ARTISTS

Every individual deserves dignity, and their experiences are a unique reservoir for creativity, wisdoms and strengths. 

We believe in COMMUNITY & COLLABORATION

“Everything worthwhile is done with other people.” —Mariame Kaba
Collaboration, collective accountability, care, and interconnectedness are vital to liberation.

We believe in JOY

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” —Audre Lorde
We uplift and grow joy as necessary antidote to white supremacy and the carceral state.

We believe in FUTURE FREEDOMS

We believe in the dismantling of the criminal legal system and systems of oppression of all kinds. We aim to complicate oversimplified harmful narratives that surround mass incarceration.

We offer workshops five days a week in Music, Creative Writing, Acting, Drawing and more. All levels of experience are embraced. We share opportunities to perform and amplify work - on screen, canvas, the page or in direct collaboration with other artists and community partners throughout New York City and across the country.

In 2024, The Creative Arts program hosted more than 400 workshops and events, including an annual Arts Festival and a studio residency at MoMA PS1.

Acting

The Acting workshop is an opportunity for community members to build/sharpen performance fundamentals while discovering and understanding more about themselves and others, and to develop empathy.

Creative Writing

The feelings of acceptance, affirmation and joy are central to our creative expression writing workshop that meets twice a week.

Music

In a weekly songwriting and recording workshop, participants craft and record songs at the on-site music studio at our Long Island City service center.

Visual Art

Through our weekly Visual Art workshops, community members refine their talents and creativity and explore self-expression through a variety of artistic techniques.

Community Partnerships

Following our belief in mutual support, we collaborate with diverse Arts partners who bring new avenues for creative expression.

Art Odyssey

Opportunities for Fortune Artists to perform, amplify and advocate for Arts as a human right and a landscape without prisons and jails.

We are excited and honored to announce our second exhibition in the Homeroom space at MoMA PS1! Featuring new works created while in residence at MoMA PS1, the exhibition in Homeroom includes self-portraits, garments, poetry, pennants, sculptures, audio recordings, a billboard, and a music video. Future Freedoms is the culmination of a four-year collaboration between the two organizations, alongside artists Jenny Polak and Laura Cerón Melo, as part of the Creatives Rebuild New York initiative. Reckoning with the aftermaths of incarceration, the exhibition imagines a more just future enacted through creativity.

The exhibition opens on November 14th, 2024, with a celebratory opening event as part of the museum’s ‘Open House’ on November 16th, and closes on March 24, 2025. We will have public programming throughout the duration of the exhibition, please join us!

Future Freedoms exhibition at MoMA PS1, Nov 14, 2024 - Mar 24, 2025 •

Future Freedoms exhibition at MoMA PS1, Nov 14, 2024 - Mar 24, 2025 •

MoMA PS1 is located at 22-25 Jackson Avenue, Queens, NY 11101 • Free for New Yorkers • Opening hours: Sun, Mon, Thu, Fri, 12–6 p.m. | Sat, 12–8 p.m. | Closed Tue and Wed

Success Stories V2, In Case of Emergency, Write a Poem, and The Basics video

We are thrilled to announce the release two incredible albums and a music video created in collaboration with our talented staff and participants! Click and listen to the music album Success Stories Vol. 2, the the spoken word album In Case of Emergency, Write a Poem, and the must-see video The Basics.

Film We Choose to Bloom

Twenty-four artists from The Fortune Society activate Rashid Johnson, Stage (2020) at MoMA PS1 on April 6 & 7, 2021. Video and Editing by Eva Cruz. Film courtesy MoMA PS1 and The Fortune Society.

We Are More Than a Label

We Are More Than a Label, is a language matters zine. It is an appeal for people to learn more about the use of humanizing - person-first - language and suggests word choices when communicating about people affected by the (in)justice system.

Voices of Fortune

Voices of Fortune is our annual print publication of art and writing for freedom. Shared nationwide, it amplifies the creative vision of the Fortune community, including participants, people currently incarcerated, staff members, and arts partners.

Help us stock our Liberation Library!

We are excited and honored to be in partnership with Astoria Bookshop, a queer woman-owned, general-interest bookstore in the heart of Western Queens.  As an extension of their mission to serve their diverse, vibrant community with books and through hosting events, our collaboration will the help Fortune's Creative Arts program fill the shelves of our Liberation Library. We believe that books are tools of liberation. We have curated a wishlist of titles that Fortune community members have requested. Please purchase a book as donation and help support our mission to inspire readers, one book at a time.

The Fortune Society

Founded in 1967, The Fortune Society’s vision is to foster a world where all who are incarcerated or formerly incarcerated will thrive as positive, contributing members of society. We do this through a holistic, one-stop model of service provision.

To address the complex and overlapping needs of our participants, The Fortune Society employs a “one-stop-shop” model of service provision to meet participants’ often overlapping needs. Fortune offers a comprehensive array of coordinated, in-house social services to over 13,000 people in a typical year via our expanding New York locations: our service centers in Long Island City, Queens and Morrisania, the Bronx, as well as several housing residences throughout the city.

What Participants Say

  • “Through the arts and Fortune, I started shedding, breaking the chain, changing my mindset (prison starts in the mind), becoming free.”

  • “For a person that has been arrested a couple of times, I thought maybe my life would be over, because I’m labeled as a criminal. But it’s not about where I’ve been, it’s where I’m about to go.”

  • “Writing was my hobby, now is my ritual. This is my sacred space.”

  • “The community and the safe space created within allows me to go deeper into myself and my art.”

  • “I feel safe and encouraged to explore new ways of expressing myself.”

  • “The Fortune Arts program sculpts you and helps you build a new you while you hold the chisel yourself, chipping away from societal indoctrination.”

Photo credit: More Art/Manuel Molina Martagon.

The Creative Arts program at The Fortune Society is made possible thanks to the generosity and support of:

Anonymous
The Dedalus Foundation
Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice
Nan Bases
Nancy Friday Foundation
New York State Council on the Arts 
Seedlings Foundation 
SHS Foundation