Our Mission
“The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
of things unknown but longed for still
and his tune is heard on the distant hill
for the caged bird sings of freedom.”
Maya Angelou
Parts of the Whole – The Body is Home is a movement project created for the purpose of strengthening communities and empowering youth living in prisons, shelters, or in transition. Through dance and somatic movement practices, creative writing, and kinesthetic and expressive experiences, the project teaches embodied arts to access increased personal health, communal attunement, and healing. With a focus on collective expressivity, Parts of the Whole engages excluded or oppressed populations whose creativity and expression have been diminished – or erased – by injustice, violence, or abuse.
Recognizing the damage and censorship carceral and abusive paradigms perpetuate, our goal is to provide creative movement experiences, dance, expressivity, joy, and play as frameworks for individual autonomy, group synchronicity, and community reciprocity. Founded and based in the Milwaukee community, Parts of the Whole creates lesson plans, activities, and community resources based in liberation and transformative justice practices and plans to develop branches of the project across and around the state of Wisconsin.
Maria Gillespie
Project Director, Lead Faculty