For the past few years our founder, humorist and syndicated columnist Mike Ball, has had the opportunity to work with incarcerated youth at the W.J. Maxey Boys Training School in Whitmore Lake, Michigan and the Adrian Girls Training School in Adrian, Michigan. He started by facilitating creative writing workshops at the Maxey facility, through his work as Cultural Programs Coordinator at the Northfield Township Area Library.

In 2005 Mike produced  a fifteen-minute mini-documentary through the Library, entitled Young Poet Incarcerated, which profiled one of these young men through the power of his original poetry. You can view this film here.

The success of Young Poet Incarcerated led to the creation, in conjunction with the Michigan Humanities Council, of the 2006 Project Roots workshops at Maxey and Adrian. Mike worked with folk musicians Josh White, Jr. and Kitty Donohoe, along with blues master Robert Jones to help the kids express themselves through  original roots music. At the end of each workshop, the students put on a concert for their entire schools, backed instrumentally and vocally by Kitty, Josh, Robert and Mike. The workshops and concerts have proved to be transforming experiences for the participants, their peers in the schools, and even the staff who deal with the kids on a day-to-day basis.

LostVoices is aimed at furthering these projects and developing new ones like them. We feel that if we can help some of these kids find constructive alternatives to the attitudes and behaviors that shaped their earlier lives, then all our efforts will have been well worth it.