Beyond Bars
Freedom Within Form: A Songwriting Intensive
A two-week songwriting curriculum developed inside a correctional institution and designed to help participants rediscover creative agency through language, self exploration, structure, and lived experience.
Developed at Walton Correctional Institution
Created by Caitlin Cannon in partnership with The Cultural Arts Alliance of Walton County
Philosophy: Beyond Bars approaches songwriting as a practice of truthfulness and self-trust—guided only by the resources each participant already carries within their own mind and body. Working without instruments or digital technology beyond pencil and paper, writers generate material from lived experience and shape it through language, imagination, structure, and embodied awareness. Rhythm is discovered in natural speech. Image emerges from memory. Meaning is refined through personal truth.
Songwriting as a Return to Inner Resources
Rather than treating limitation as an obstacle, the workshop explores the creative freedom found within boundaries. Through meditative practice, sequenced lessons, intentional writing constraints, and reflective homework, participants learn to distinguish what is emotionally honest from what is merely decorative—to sense when a line belongs, and when it does not.
The process culminates in a public concert in which each participant performs their original song—regardless of prior musical training or performance experience. The emphasis is not on technical perfection, but on presence, authenticity, and the courage to be heard. Each writer leaves with a completed work that has been written, refined, and performed—along with a repeatable method that remains accessible regardless of circumstance or access to tools.
