About Us
Walls to Bridges (W2B) is an innovative educational program that brings together incarcerated (“Inside”) and non-incarcerated (“Outside”) students to study post-secondary courses in jails and prisons across Canada. The National Hub for the program is based out of the McMaster Indigenous Research Institute (MIRI) at McMaster University, in partnership with Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener. The National Hub was previously based out of the Lyle S. Hallman Faculty of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University.
Experiential learning is foundational to the W2B teaching and learning process. An important principle of all W2B courses is that students from outside the correctional system are not ‘mentoring’ or ‘helping’ or ‘working with’ incarcerated/criminalized students: all participants in the class are peers, learning the class content together through innovative, experiential and dialogical processes. Self-reflexivity is a key component of W2B classes.
By providing access to education for incarcerated peoples and through collaborative scholarly inquiry with university-based students, Walls to Bridges classes offer opportunities to understand the complexities of criminalization and punishment through lived experiences and intersectional analyses. This is a transformational educational experience which draws upon lived experience as a source of theorizing as well as challenges the artificial boundaries between people experiencing imprisonment and those who are not.
National Hub
The Walls to Bridges National Hub is located in the McMaster Indigenous Research Institute (MIRI) at McMaster University. Walls to Bridges began in 2011 as a partnership between Grand Valley Institution for Women (GVIW) in Kitchener, Ontario and the Faculty of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University (WLU). Currently, we’re building a larger, more inclusive leadership model. McMaster is teaming up with Wilfrid Laurier and Toronto Metropolitan Universities to develop a co-institutional governance model for Walls to Bridges National. OCC coordinator Lorraine Pinnock is also being recognized as a co-director in the leadership, reflecting the important work they’ve been doing for years. Also included as co-directors are Sara Howdle (McMaster), Rai Reece (TMU), Marcia Oliver (Laurier), Shoshana Pollack (Laurier), and Tori Poe.
W2B National is also making connections to local programs across the country to increase regional representation at the National level. It’s a gradual process and we’re looking forward to seeing it develop.
Courses
W2B courses are university or college-based classes taught in jails, prison and community correctional settings. Students who are or have been incarcerated study together with students enrolled in university/college programs. All students who successfully complete the course receive a university/college credit. An important principle of W2B courses is that students from outside the correctional system are not ‘mentoring’ or ‘helping’ or ‘working with’ incarcerated/criminalized students: all participants in the class are peers, learning the class content together through innovative, experiential and dialogical processes.