Beyond Bars
Songwriting Inside Prison Walls
What is it?
Founded by songwriter Caitlin Cannon in partnership with the Cultural Arts Alliance of Walton County, Florida, Beyond Bars is a 10 day songwriting and performance curriculum taught inside correctional facilities. The curriculum concludes with a final concert where incarcerated graduate songwriters perform their own songs for their peers and facility staff.
Beyond Bars Collective is a group of professional independent singer-songwriters trained in facilitating Beyond Bars, joining incarcerated people on their healing journeys by asking them to explore their deepest truths and traumas through songwriting
By the numbers
12 programs completed at the pilot facility, Walton Correctional Institution
150+ graduate songwriters
200 in the audience at each final concert
Beyond Bars Cohort Fall 2024, Walton Correctional Institution
Why it works
Like a law, the more vulnerable the performance, the more the men are lifted up by the people around them. They see themselves in each other's stories and learn they are not alone.
Where they were once hurt people hurting people, they are now healing people healing people.
Prison is a radically inclusive space. Graduates come from every age, race and faith, which makes the program a rare opportunity for intergenerational, interracial and interfaith healing.
Research backs it up. Songwriting has been shown to reduce PTSD symptoms and trauma markers in the brain, and arts program participants in prisons show lower recidivism and fewer and less severe violent infractions.
In Their Words
How it started
In 2017, burned out on bar gigs and the music business, David wrote a song with a combat veteran living with severe PTSD. A year later the man told him the song had saved his life.
"It was a defibrillator on my fading musical heart, and the moment that led me to the work I do today. When Anna and I met Caitlin in the spring of 2024 and she told us they were looking to train the first group of songwriters to facilitate her program at WCI, we jumped at the opportunity.”
David and Marine Combat Veteran Eric Killeen
How You Can Support
Keep Beyond Bars Going in Walton County, FL
Beyond Bars is in need of funding in order to continue our mission at Walton Correctional Institution. Make a tax deductible donation to the Cultural Arts Alliance of Walton County
Support Expansion through Beyond Bars Collective
Our program has been accepted into the Mississippi State Penitentiary and looking to partner with more facilities. Make a tax deductible donation to Beyond Bars Collective through our fiscal sponsor, The Which House to support this expansion
Bring the program to your facility.
Beyond Bars Collective would like to partner partner with your local correctional facility. David and Anna Grace also offer trauma-informed songwriting classes which can also be booked alongside a performance.
Get in touch: