Beyond These Gates: Remembering Home, the Prison, and a Place That Has Yet to Be
An evening of documentary storytelling, live conversations, poetry, music, and video art at Kan Kan Cinema. November 11, 7:30-9pm.
Image design by mollrat studios
Who gets to shape the future of a place, and whose memories get carried forward?
For more than 150 years, the Indiana Women's Prison was a place of confinement, punishment, and profound harm. But for the women who lived there, it was also a place where friendships formed, communities emerged, and complicated relationships with the idea of "home" took shape.
Now, as the former prison site on Indianapolis' Near Eastside moves toward redevelopment, those histories raise important questions: What does it mean to honor a place like this? Whose experiences should inform what comes next? And what might redevelopment make possible beyond the preservation of buildings and grounds?
On Wednesday, November 11, City Rising presents Beyond These Gates: Remembering Home, the Prison, and a Place That Has Yet to Be at Kan Kan Cinema as part of the 2026 Spirit & Place Festival.
The 90-minute experience weaves together documentary video and audio, conversations with formerly incarcerated women and others connected to the site, original poetry drawn from interviews and historical records, live music, and video art.
Moving between the prison's history, the experiences of women who called it home, the hopes and concerns of surrounding neighborhoods, and visions for its future, the evening invites audiences to sit with difficult truths and unexpected possibilities.
Those truths begin with the social conditions and attitudes that led to the incarceration of women and girls, including the early "ticket to leave" system through which incarcerated women and girls were placed into domestic servitude for affluent Indianapolis families. They extend to the prison's legacy of medical experimentation and abuse, the physical and emotional consequences of incarceration, and the complicated ways women built community within an institution designed for confinement and separation. Together, these histories reveal how the prison shaped the Near Eastside and Indianapolis, how its effects continue to be felt today, and why redevelopment presents both opportunities and risks for surrounding communities.
Beyond These Gates is an effort to document history. It's also an experiment in how research, storytelling, and creative expression might influence the future of a place.
Developed through 18 months of interviews, historical inquiry, and artistic collaboration, the project centers voices too often missing from public conversations about redevelopment. Rather than offering a single conclusion, it creates space for new questions, deeper understanding, and different possibilities.
Among the most important possibilities is one voiced consistently by formerly incarcerated women: What if honoring this place meant creating the kinds of opportunities and support that could have made their lives safer and more stable before incarceration—or helped them rebuild their lives afterward?
Whether you're a neighbor, artist, historian, planner, public official, or simply curious, you're invited to experience the stories and consider what comes next.
The evening will also feature Dr. Elizabeth Angeline Nelson and Dr. Michelle Daniel Jones, editors of Who Would Believe a Prisoner?, who will be available with information and copies of the book for purchase.
Event details
Date: Wednesday, November 11, 2026
Time: 7:30 p.m. (90 minutes)
Location: Kan Kan Cinema, 1258 Windsor Street, Indianapolis
Tickets: $10
The Kan Kan bar and gathering area will remain open until 10 p.m. for those wishing to continue conversations after the event.
Purchase tickets and learn more
Beyond These Gates is a City Rising project supported in part by Indiana Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and made possible through the contributions of women who called IWP home and communities including Willard Park, Woodruff Place, and Indianapolis' Near Eastside.