For more information contact:
Alison Cornyn
212.226.3099 ext.301
acorn@pictureprojects.comAward-winning Criminal Justice Website Adds Interactive Documentary:
When a Kids’ Prison Leaves Town: The Tallulah StoryTallulah Citizens Organize to Replace Infamous Prison with a Community CollegeNEW YORK, NY -- Documentary maker Alison Cornyn knew Tallulah by reputation: an impoverished Louisiana river town further blighted by a notorious juvenile prison. The New York Times had dubbed Tallulah – a.k.a. Swanson Correction Center for Youth – the worst kids’ prison in the United States. When repeated abuses, lawsuits and public outrage convinced Louisiana governor Mike Foster to close the place down, Cornyn knew she had found the topic of her next documentary. Her focus would be the other Tallulah – the town left behind when the last young inmate moves out in June.
On June 4, When a Kids’ Prison Leaves Town: The Tallulah Story will debut on Picture Projects’ cutting-edge website: http://www.360degrees.org.
What Cornyn hadn’t expected was the inspiration and sense of optimism she found among Tallulah residents as they braced for a prison closing that jeopardizes some 400 local jobs. Instead of despair, Cornyn found a citizen’s group with big dreams about finally seeing Tallulah escape its dead-end economy as a prison town. At the heart of their vision is recycling the youth prison as a community college, regional job training center and business incubator all rolled into one: the Delta Learning Center. In politics, as in any good narrative, there is always a conflict, and in this case it’s between the state Department of Corrections and the local residents of Tallulah. To hang on in Tallulah, the DOC is lobbying to convert its failed youth prison into a facility for the incarceration of adults. The documentary cuts to the quick of a battle for the soul of a small Delta town.
Visit www.360degrees.org "Stories" section to meet local residents and Delta Coalition members – among them a former elementary school principal, a city council woman and a former prison guard. While hearing each person’s story, you can tour the speaker’s personal space by navigating 360 degrees up, down and around offices, living rooms and prison cells.
The Tallulah story was recorded in 2003, a production of Cornyn’s documentary company, Picture Projects. Since then the Coalition has introduced a bill in the Louisiana Legislature that would authorize creation of the community college that is at the heart of the Delta Learning Center vision. The Coalition will outline its plans for the public at a June 4th news conference in Tallulah – the day the last child leaves the facility.
Recent awards for the 360degree site include the National Press Club’s Online Journalism Award, the Pew Center for Civic Journalism’s Batten Award, the Online News Association’s Online Journalism Award for Most Creative Use of the Medium Macromedia’s People’s Choice Award, a Webby award for net.art and a Prix Ars Electronica honorary mention.
360degrees has received funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Creative Capital, the New York Council for the Humanities, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York Community Trust.
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