Through ritual, literature, storytelling, and public dialogue, Ritual4Return (R4R) uses the humanities to facilitate personal and societal transformation, helping to reshape the narrative around incarceration and reintegration.

R4R is a 12-week program through which groups of returning citizens undertake a process of creating and performing a homecoming rite of passage as they transition from incarceration to freedom. In the course, participants engage with and explore the many aspects of their own experiences getting into, through, and out of prison.

Reading from a wide variety of source materials and then trying to understand them through dialogue, writing, movement exercises, and theatrical devising techniques, participants explore—individually and collectively—themes like Home, Sin, Judgement, Punishment, Exile, Bondage, Trauma, Grief, Freedom, Repair, Forgiveness, Justice, and Homecoming.

The process culminates with a one-time-only public ritual marking and celebrating the end of incarceration and the beginning of an individual’s new identity within the community. This rite of passage is the centerpiece of a one-day gathering that aims to extend the conversation to family members, loved ones, and other community stakeholders who care about the impacts of incarceration.