Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting (PCCR) is an innovative award-winning nonprofit journalism organization dedicated to supporting in-depth engagement with underreported global affairs. PCCR achieves that goal by sponsoring quality international journalism across all media platforms and directing a unique program of outreach and education to schools and universities.

Wih continued Art for Justice support, PCCR supported the World of Difference initiative, a three-year journalistic effort to examine issues related to mass incarceration over a three year period. In partnership with Illinois Humanities’“Envisioning Justice” exhibit on incarceration in Illinois,the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting hosted a half-day program to educate Pulitzer Center journalists and other leaders from Chicago institutions. To design the project, the Pulitzer Center called on the expertise of fellow Art for Justice partners Voice of the Experienced, Fair Sentencing of Youth and Youth Justice Fund. The convening also featured engagements with high school and post-secondary students, as well as another workshop at Illinois Youth Center. With a further grant, PCCR partnered with journalists and newsrooms to support in-depth reporting on critical issues to educate the public, promote solutions and improve lives. Support from this grant enabled the Pulitzer Center, through its World of Difference project, to continue to commission and produce new works in journalism and media that will better inform Americans of the underlying issues that have created and perpetuated deep-rooted challenge around incarceration in the United States, illuminating our criminal justice system and its injustices and basis in racial bias. They also expanded The 1619 Project and worked to meet the overwhelming demand for additional racial justice education support from teachers and school districts. They orchestrated a national tour of The Box, a play about solitary confinement written and created by survivors, and support new journalism on mass incarceration and other justice issues, helping to ensure that these topics get the sustained media attention they need worldwide.

With their latest Art for Justice grant, PCCR has commissioned live (virtual) performances of Sarah Shourd’s award-winning play “The BOX”, featuring actors who were formerly incarcerated. The intimate and raw performance of true stories of life and resistance in solitary confinement in U.S. prisons will reach a global audience. Shourd, a survivor of solitary confinement, developed “The BOX” in collaboration with other survivors. The Pulitzer Center also commissioned a special online presentation by actress and playwright Liza Jessie Peterson that incorporates clips from her performance of “The Peculiar Patriot.” “The Peculiar Patriot” is an indictment of the systemic inequality within the carceral system. Through these performances and subsequent educational engagements, audiences will come together to learn, envision a better future and take action to create it.