In Conversation with Bryonn Bain: Birkbeck Law Artist-in-Residence
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck Main Building, Malet Street
Join the School of Law’s Artist in Residence, Bryonn Bain, for an evening dedicated to critical engagement at the junction of law, activism and performance.
The first part of the evening will feature a talk and performance by Bryonn Bain. He will introduce his artistic work, his approach to pedagogy and his commitment to ending mass incarceration. This will be followed by a panel discussion with Birkbeck faculty members, Dr Sarah Lamble (Criminology), Dr Kojo Koram (Law) and Dr Eddie Bruce-Jones (Law), which will interrogate the nexus of activism, art and education in countering the systemic violence of incarceration and dismantling the prison industrial complex.
The event is organised by the Birkbeck Centre for Law and the Humanities.
About the Artist-in-Residence
Bryonn Bain is Brooklyn’s own prison activist, actor, hip hop theater innovator and spoken word poetry champion. Described by Cornel West as an artist who “…speaks his truth with a power we desperately need to hear,” his theater, film and television work are critically acclaimed – from his award winning BET talk show “My Two Cents,” and Emmy nomination for “BaaadDDD Sonia,” to this year’s Emmy award for “LA Stories.” Playing over 40 characters in his one-man theater production, Lyrics From Lockdown is executive produced by Harry Belafonte (“BlacKkKlansman”), and tells the story of Bain’s wrongful imprisonment through hip hop theater, blues, calypso, comedy and letters exchanged with fellow poet and friend, Nanon Williams – who was wrongfully sentenced to Death Row at 17 years old. For its record-breaking runs at The Actor’s Gang Theater in Los Angeles, his one-man show won the awards for “Best Solo Performance” from LA Weekly in 2018 and from the NAACP in 2019.
Wrongfully imprisoned in his second year at Harvard Law, Bryonn sued the NYPD, and told his story for 20 million viewers on “60 Minutes” in an interview with Mike Wallace. After writing The Village Voice cover story “Walking While Black: The Bill of Rights for Black America,” his work received the largest response in the history of the nation’s most widely read progressive newspaper. Bain produced the Lyrics on Lockdown Tour, which reached 25 states, and spawned higher education courses using the performing arts to build literacy in prisons nationwide. For the decade that followed, Bain taught courses using the arts on Rikers Island penal colony. After teaching hip hop, spoken word and theater at Harvard, Bain founded the prison education program at NYU to offer higher education and college degrees to men incarcerated in upstate New York.
Bryonn is the founding director of the Prison Education Program at UCLA, where he has developed and taught courses and programs in LA prisons including the California Institute for Women, Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall, Camp Joseph Scott and Central Juvenile Hall. As co-supervisor of the International Human Rights Law Clinic at UCLA School of Law, Bain guided the research, development and 2018 release of Women Beyond Bars: Reentry and Human Rights — a 100+ page report developed over two years with the CIW Think Tank he helped organize in the state’s oldest women’s prison in California.
This event is open to the public and free to attend however booking is required via this page. We kindly request that if you are unable to attend that you cancel your booking in order to allow others to attend.
Latecomers to the event are not guaranteed entry. Please be advised that photographs may be taken at the event.
Please contact us if you have any access requirements. See here for further details of accessibility at Birkbeck venues. Food and drink may be served at this event. Please contact us if you have any allergies that we may need to consider.
Contact name:
School of Law