The book is available on the Planète rebelle Website or by clicking here. This book is available in French only.

The next release is a book and CD titled Temps d’agir, based on the “Agir par l’imaginaire” program, which brings artists together with women serving sentences in prison, psychiatric hospitals or the community. This magnificent program, both ambitious and innovative, comprises a broad range of creative arts including writing, photography, self-portrait, theatre, dance, video and sound art. The pieces produced will be featured in an exhibit. The book features writing the women did during the creative process as well as visual art produced in prison. The incarcerated women who took part in the project are given the chance to be followed for a one-year period. The project is an initiative of the Elizabeth Fry Society of Quebec and Engrenage Noir / LEVIER. Temps d’agir is published by Planète Rebelle in its “Traces” collection, edited by D. Kimm and Les Filles Électriques.

Over a period of two years, some ten guest artists worked alongside some fifty criminalized women in a program called Agir par l’imaginaire (Taking action by imagining), which runs inside institutions for women. The program is an initiative of the Elizabeth Fry Society of Quebec and Engrenage Noir / LEVIER, designed to encourage reflection on the links between criminality and poverty—a poverty that could be economic, intellectual, physical, psychological, emotional, social or familial. It invites us to take a hard look at the role of prisons in our society and alternatives to imprisonment.

In excerpts from their reflections and visual art, Temps d’agir reveals the imaginative life and daily grind of women behind bars. Beyond giving them a voice, the book hopes to stimulate discussion with work that is rich in intelligence, sensitivity, beauty and humanity, as brave as it is fragile. The words and images are gripping, while the sound art, songs and slams lead us one step further towards knowing who these women truly are. Temps d’agir is both a place to ask questions and the uncensored self-expression of lives rarely seen or heard.