The Garden Collective

The P4W Memorial Collective is a group of women ex-prisoners from the Prison for Women (P4W) who are working towards the creation of a permanent memorial garden and community space on the grounds of P4W, in Katarokwi/Kingston, Ontario. Through our work we honour the women who lost their lives in P4W, and uplift the stories of those women who survived. We aim to raise public consciousness about injustices that continue to be perpetrated in Canadian jails and prisons, and to support resistance to carceral colonial power through coalitional decolonial abolitionist praxis amongst people with prison experience, as well as those who have never been inside. Our group holds events at P4W each year on Prisoners’ Justice Day, where we plant the seeds of transformative justice and move closer to planting a memorial garden.

(Still from THE GARDEN COLLECTIVE.)

Sara Wylie is a non-fiction filmmaker, producer and researcher from the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. She has directed (“The Garden Collective” 2020 & “A Radiant Sphere” 2019) and produced award-winning short documentaries (“Handsome & Majestic” 2016), a feature film (“Wizard Mode” 2016), as well as story-produced several documentary series for VICELAND, Telus Optik and the Travel Channel.

Sara graduated with distinction from X (formerly Ryerson) University’s Documentary Media MFA Program in 2019, and is the recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council and SSHRC. Her films have screened at Vancouver International Film Festival, DOXA Documentary Film Festival, RIDM Documentary Festival, the Canadian Labour International Film Festival, South Western International Film Festival, Art Gallery of Hamilton Film Festival and more. She was selected for the RIDM Documentary Talent Lab in 2018 and the Telus Banff Media Festival Emerging Talent Fellowship in 2016.