Experimental music meets hip-hop for inaugural event promoting healing from mass incarceration

Bloomington-Normal nonprofits are banding together for a first-of-its-kind Wellness Weekend, with a communitywide festival of arts and humanities programs aimed at examining the impact of mass incarceration.

YWCA McLean County organized the Wellness Weekend as part of its new role as a hub for the statewide program Envisioning Justice. Friday's kickoff event at the Creativity Center in downtown Bloomington includes hands-on mask making with King Moosa, a Bloomington-based “artivist” who uses hip-hop, poetry and visual art to inspire change in the criminal justice system. BCAI Cultural Arts and Humanities, Creative Healing Art Therapy and Silver Back Apparel will also be there from 6-8 p.m., the latter screening T-shirts with the weekend’s theme: Healing is crime prevention.

More artmaking sessions take place Saturday at Illinois Art Station, University Galleries and the Creativity Center. People of all ages and experience can join yoga classes and songwriting sessions. And there is ample opportunity to hear music, too—much of the weekend free and open to the public.

Moosa, whose given name is Brian Harrington, opens for Brooklyn-based experimental musician Matthew Ryals with a hip-hop set at Illinois Art Station on Sunday evening, where attendees will also be able to view masks created throughout the weekend. Ryals and Harrington don’t know one another. And in many ways, you could call their music polar opposites.

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