For example, Pinderhughes plans to make a printed book version of The Healing Project, because so many participants are incarcerated. They’re not able to access the collaboration otherwise.
When he asked participants what they would need to create a space for their healing, spiritually or materially, some interviewees said that they needed things as basic as access to healthy food and jobs — which, for those formerly incarcerated, can be very hard to secure.
“We’re also starting an initiative called The Healing Project Transformative Impact Fund,” Pinderhughes notes, “where we’re going to be using the project as a container to actually start to support the dreams and hopes and projects of the actual people who participated in the project — folks particularly who are formerly and currently incarcerated.”
At the same time, he says, “We’re going to continue to do that art, that narrative work, we’re going to make the book, we’re going to make more albums, we’re going to make more exhibitions, we’re going to make more films."
In the meantime, he hopes that the music of The Healing Project, and the power of its art, helps both creators and audiences chart their own paths to healing. He recalls a man coming up to him after a recent performance.
“He was like, I feel like you should make a shirt that says, ‘I make grown men cry,’ ” Pinderhughes recounts. “And I was like, ‘That’s not a bad idea.’ So now, just kind of jokingly, that’s the tagline of what the energy is.”
Friday evening, Pinderhughes and some of his musical collaborators will be performing a concert version of The Healing Project at New York’s Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall. Almost inevitably, people will cry. And that's a big part of healing.
Edited by: Neda Ulaby
Produced by: Anastasia Tsioulcas
Audio story produced by: Isabella Gomez Sarmiento