About Us 
What is Arts in Prison, Inc.?
Arts in Prison, Inc.'s mission is to facilitate personal growth through the arts for the incarcerated and their families. Arts in Prison, Inc. is a not-for-profit, tax-exempt organization funded by private donations, corporations and grants.
How did we get started?
In 1995, Elvera Voth organized the East Hill Singers, a men's chorus of inmates from Lansing Correctional Facility and volunteer singers from the Kansas City area. The first performance was in 1996.
Founder and Conducter,
Elvera Voth
This chorus revealed undeveloped talents in the prison population and the need for arts programming to tap into these latent gifts as an empowering and creative tool for rehabilitation. In 1998, Arts in Prison, Inc. was founded to meet this need.
Kansas native, Elvera Voth, founded Arts in Prison, in 1998 and has been conductor of East Hill Singers ever since. Ms. Voth is known nationwide as an outstanding choral conductor, and is in demand as a guest conductor and workshop presenter. She has been honored with the Dr. Karl Menninger Award for her outstanding contribution to the field of corrections.
She has won the coveted governor's arts award in two states — Kansas and Alaska. In Alaska, she founded the Anchorage Grand Opera.
Ms. Voth and the East Hill Singers are the subjects of a documentary film produced by Sunflower Journeys of public television station, KTWU in Topeka. The film won a top award from the Midwest Society of Professional Journalists in the documentary category. It then went on to win the top prize at the Midwest Emmy Awards in the documentary category.
Executive Director - Nancy Meis
After a varied career in business and nonprofit leadership, Nancy came to Arts in Prison as a consultant in 2004. After seeing first hand the benefits the inmates received and the dedication of the talented artists who volunteered for the organization, she decided to come on board full time.
She has a B.A. in music and a Masters in Business Administration, and is listed in Who's Who in America. She has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal and numerous other publications. She is an international speaker, most recently presented at the American Correctional Association National Convention.
Executive Director,
Nancy Meis
Arts in Prison, Inc. is sponsored in part by the Kansas Arts Commission, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.