This multimedia art installation expresses the stories of 28 people who were institutionalized for developmental disabilities. Drawings, paintings, group murals, photographs, and soundscapes express the haunting images of life inside and outside these institutions.

Small groups of storytellers worked with artist Persimmon Blackbridge to create individual and collective pieces of visual art based on their memories of institutional life and their return to community. In addition, two soundscapes were composed from the many hours of audiotape gathered during the original oral history project. Of the original 28 history narrators, 19 chose to participate as visual artists. They met in workshop settings across BC with the artist. Themes of charts, grids and barred windows - trappings of institutional life - run throughout the work.

Sometimes these images are literal, others metaphorical. Many of the artists chose to express the contrast between their time in the institutions and their lives now. Blackbridge in her role as artist curator, workshop facilitator, exhibit designer and helper, worked collaboratively with the community artists, weaving art works and words together. The haunting photographs taken by Pat Feindel are a strong presence in many of the group murals and in works about specific historical events drawn together by Blackbridge.