Dr. Kevin Bott is founder and artistic director of Ritual4Return, Inc (R4R). In 2006, Kevin began facilitating prison theater workshops for the non-profit, Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA), and in 2007 became RTA’s first director of education. In 2019, Kevin was named the “Blade of Grass-David Rockefeller Fund Joint Fellow in Criminal Justice.” In 2024, R4R was awarded the Katz Prize for Excellence in Public Humanities and in 2025 was awarded first place in the “Arts Advancing Social Justice” category by the National Organization for Arts in Health. he is currently leading R4R projects in Newark and Camden, and mentoring teams in Boston and the Twin Cities. With Jan Cohen-Cruz, Bott co-edited the volume, Performing Emancipatory Rites of Passage, which was published by Routledge in February 2026.

 

Kevin is the director of Rutgers Arts Online, the online division of Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. Previously, Kevin served as Dean for Civic Engagement at Wagner College and, prior to that, was Associate Director and Director of Cultural Organizing at Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and three children.