We are overjoyed to share that Entry Points has been awarded the 2025 J.M.K. Innovation Prize! Following a nationwide search for early-stage projects with transformative potential, the J.M. Kaplan Fund awards the biennial Prize to ten innovators tackling urgent issues in the fields of social justice, the environment, and heritage conservation. Awardees receive $175,000 each and join a collaborative designed to help navigate critical phases of growth and impact. “By addressing the need for both stable housing and creative expression and community, Entry Points offers a transformative pathway for people rebuilding lives impacted by unconstitutional sentences,” said Julia Bator, Executive Director of the J.M. Kaplan Fund. “Their work reflects the humanity and ingenuity at the heart of the J.M.K. Innovation Prize, and we are thrilled to support them over the coming years.” Now in its tenth year, the J.M.K. Innovation Prize honors organizations pioneering transformative approaches to complex challenges in the fields of heritage conservation, the environment, and social justice. This year’s milestone cycle drew a record 3,790 applications, underscoring the growing need for philanthropic support of untested but promising ideas. The 2025 winners join a national network of 60 past recipients who continue to collaborate and learn from one another through convenings, mentorship, and strategic guidance provided by the J.M. Kaplan Fund. Learn more at jmkfund.org/innovation-prize-2025/ @entry__points @thejmkaplanfund

As we prepare to introduce the 2025–2026 artist-in-residence, we look back to our time with poet and artist, James D. Fuson, the first resident at Entry Points. After thirty years behind bars, James began his transitional journey home in 2022 with Entry Points, and in 2023, while in residence, he was awarded a Kresge Artist Fellowship for his expansive, experimental poetry practice. To celebrate James’ fellowship, Kresge Arts in Detroit commissioned Katie Barkel and 7 Cylinders Studio to produce this short film on his writing practice while in residence. James D. Fuson is a writer and artist. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Ugly Duckling Presse, the Washington Square Review (New York University Press), University of Michigan Press, Three Fold Press, and Essay’d (Wayne State University Press). He has presented work at the Detroit Institute of Arts, the College for Creative Studies, Yale School of Art, and Michigan Radio, among others. His first collection of poems, “20 Years: Reflections of an Empty Sky”—a serpentine narrative of James’ first 20 years in prison—is in its second printing. Film courtesy of Formation Films (@formation_films ) and Kresge Arts in Detroit (@kresgeartsdetroit ). For more about James, visit entrypoints.org.

We had the pleasure of visiting the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation (@rauschenbergfoundation ) in New York last week. Many thanks to Francine Snyder, Director of Archives & Digital, for welcoming us and sharing the incredible decades-spanning work throughout Foundation’s offices and archives. We’re grateful for the opportunity to engage with Rauschenberg’s legacy and the Foundation’s ongoing work in supporting artists and experimentation. In 2024, Entry Points co-founder Jonathan Rajewski was a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives Researcher in Residence. The focus of that research was largely drawn from Rauschenberg’s correspondences, writings and notes on a range of political concerns–apartheid, AIDS, housing insecurity, LGBTQ rights, indigenous rights, censorship, and nuclear disarmament–to better construct an understanding of how his own commitments to civil and human rights intersect with that of abolitionist practices. We are grateful to the Rauschenberg Foundation for supporting this research and welcoming us last week in New York!

Entry Points is a re-entry artist and writer residency for returning citizens sentenced as juveniles to mandatory life without parole, without accessible housing or income, to live and work as they transition to life outside in Detroit, Michigan. Entry Points is organized by Kyle Daniel-Bey (@akinyemisaradanielbey ) and Jonathan Rajewski (@jonathanrajewski ) of the Hamtramck Free School (@free_school ). This work is not possible without the support of Creative Capital (@creative_capital ). Belatedly, we share with excitement that Entry Points has be awarded a 2024 Creative Capital Wild Futures Award! The 2024 Creative Capital Award in Visual Arts & Film/Moving Image awarded artist grants totaling $2.5 million to create 50 new works to 54 artists across the U.S. and Puerto Rico on the basis of their innovative new approaches to painting, drawing, sculpture, public art, video art, architecture and design, printmaking, installation, documentary film, experimental film, narrative film, socially engaged forms, and more.

We’re excited to share that the Entry Points website is now live! Learn more about the work we’re doing, and how to support, at . Link in bio. Entrypoints.org is designed and developed by Bianca Ibarlucea (@bianca_ibarlucea ) with support from Creative Capital (@creative_capital ). And you can draw on it!