Kyoko Aoki, 2012 candidate for a Master’s in Library and Information Science from the UCLA Department of Information Studies. Worked with the Habeas Corpus Resource Center, a state entity that represents men and women on California’s death row for seven+ years. Prior to that, worked with grassroots community groups in northeastern Ohio providing advocacy for the human and civil rights of incarcerated people. Also processed the Arts-in-Corrections Artwork and Records Collection as a graduate student fellow with the Center for Primary Research and Training at the UCLA Young Research Library Special Collections.
Home of Herbert Wells in Rialto, CA
1 hour 7 minutes
Wells and Aoki
The Arts-in-Corrections oral history series documents the experiences of formerly incarcerated artists, professional artists, and administrators who participated in the Arts-in-Corrections program in California’s correctional institutions. Arts-in-Corrections was a California Department of Corrections’ program that placed professional artists in correctional institutions across the state to provide arts instruction to incarcerated men and women. The program spans three decades, from its inception as the Pilot Prison Arts Program in 1979 through its official termination in 2010. Arts-in-Corrections was jointly administered by the California Department of Corrections, William James Association, and Artsreach—a community outreach program through UCLA Extension.
This oral history collection complements the Arts-in-Corrections Artwork and Records Collection, which is held in the UCLA University Archives and the California Arts-in-Corrections Program, 1983-2009 sound recording collection that is held at the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive. The oral history interviews were part of a master’s thesis research conducted by the interviewer, Kyoko Aoki, that looks at the viability of employing oral history as one methodology to contextualize a community archival collection that has been taken in by an institutional archive.
Interviewees were identified through the Arts-in-Corrections archival records, introductions by individuals at the William James Association and the Poetic Justice Project, and through snowball sampling where existing narrators recruited or recommended other narrators for inclusion in the project. Dr. Larry Brewster, dean of the College of Professional Studies at the University of San Francisco, and Dr. Ben Harbert, assistant professor of music at Georgetown University, who have conducted independent research related to Arts-in-Corrections, also provided introductions and contact information for potential interviewees.
UCLA’s Office of the Human Research Protection Program has approved this oral history project through its Institutional Review Board. Interviewees were selected and approached according to guidelines set forth in the IRB application. No artists who are still incarcerated, or anyone under parole supervision or probation were contacted for this project.
Mr. Wells was interviewed in his home in Rialto, California. Kyoko Aoki created the timed log of the interview, which Mr. Wells reviewed and approved without any changes.
Records relating to the interview are located in the office of the UCLA Library’s Center for Oral History Research.
The Arts-in-Corrections Artwork and Records Collection includes 160 document boxes and 4 half-document boxes (81 linear feet), 2 shoeboxes, and 4 oversize boxes of manuscripts, artwork, and audiovisual materials. The collection is housed at the UCLA University Archives. Preferred Citation: Arts-in-Corrections Artwork and Records (Series 721) UCLA University Archives, University of California, Los Angeles.
The California Arts-in-Corrections Program, 1983-2009 collection at the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive includes analog cassettes; digital discs; tape reels; and VHS, Video8, U-matic, and Hi8 videocassettes. The recordings were created at Folsom Prison, Soledad Correctional Training Facility, California Institution for Men in Chino, and the William James Association Prison Arts Project. This collection is stored off-site at the Southern Regional Library Facility. The collection record ID number is 13178.