VYCKY PRATT KEATING shown here performing at La Residencia Nursing Home. She performed at the very first Outside In event in 1995 at a youth shelter. Photo Credit: Sam Adams

In 1974, Mimi Fariña, of the memorable folk duo of Richard and Mimi Fariña and sister of Joan Baez founded Bread & Roses. Tragically, Richard Farina died in a motorcycle accident in 1966 on Mimi's 21st birthday. In the years that followed, Mimi was looking for something deeper and more soul satisfying than a commercial musical career. She saw the overwhelming isolation of institutionalized people who were, often forgotten by society. To meet their need for human contact, Mimi conceived the idea for Bread & Roses in 1974. Her vision then was that the warmth and human contact of a live performance would be healing to audiences shut away from the outside world, and at the same time life enhancing for the performers. Bread and Roses has been delivering the performing arts to institutionalized populations in the Bay area for 30 years. (See "Remembering Mimi")

It was during the 1980’s that David Lescht had the experience of performing live in prisons and hospitals along the west coast and later throughout Spain. As manager and member of a not very well rehearsed band called Brotherhood, David was struck by the impact this band had on such facilities in spite of the Band’s shortcomings. He always wondered what it would be like to go into a facility with a seasoned and professional group of musicians, following in the legendary footsteps of BB King, Johnny Cash, John Lee Hooker and Bonnie Raitt all known for their powerful performances in prisons.

In the spring of 1994, Bob Schapiro who was the drummer of the defunct Brotherhood Band sent David a Bread & Roses brochure which contained information on how to start up a similar organization in one’s own community. Bob was then enrolled in a Doctoral Program at the University of Massachusetts. He suggested that David start a Bread & Roses type endeavor in New Mexico and that then he would join him after he completed his studies. The idea germinated with David, and a year later in the spring of 1995, he launched Outside In. Concurrently, Bob Schapiro suddenly passed away with a heart ailment before David could even let him know about the birth of Outside In.

The first Outside In event was held in June 1995, at Santa Fe’s Emergency Youth Shelter, with Vycky Pratt Keating singing and talking with shelter residents about her own experiences as a teenage runaway. Outside In then began presenting performances and presentations at a wide range of institutions and social service programs in Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and other regions in New Mexico. The number of Outside In performances began to expand dramatically in the succeeding years from 84 events in 1996 to 120 in 1997 to 200 in 1998 to 267 in 1999 to 367 in 2000 to 521 in 2001 and to our current yearly average of 500 performances and workshops.

In July 1998, Outside In began to provide free weekly guitar classes at the Santa Fe County Juvenile Detention Center as well as weekly guitar workshops for those youth released from detention. Outside In arranged to have guitars donated to the Santa Fe Boys & Girls Club by the Bonnie Raitt/Fender Guitar Program. In 2000 this guitar insruction program evolved into the Youth With Promise program, which is a continuous series of free weekly art, music and dance educational workshops for high-risk youth in detention, shelters and residential treatment programs and for other underserved youth in the community, that includes an aftercare component especially to enable juvenile offenders to continue their instruction once they are released into the community. The program was then renamed “Youth With Promise” (formally known as Creative Arts for At-risk Youth) in order to accentuate the positive reality of these troubled but promising youngsters and to remove the stigma of being labeled “At-risk”. Since the program began more than 2,500 young people have been impacted by these weekly arts instuction workshops inside and outside of detention.

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