Even the boats used in the prison workshop have stories. Most were smugglers’ boats. They didn’t smuggle stuff. They smuggled people.

The boats the prisoners carve once carried migrants to Italy. These migrants were often refugees—people fleeing another country. Refugees seek homes where it is safe to live and possible to earn money. They often risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean Sea. Thousands do not survive the trip.

The old boats end up at prisons. Inmates remove rusty nails. They send more damaged wood to another prison in Rome. Prisoners there transform the wood into crosses and prayer beads. Next stop? Another workshop. There, migrants string the beads together. Full circle!

The boats carry evidence of the people who used them. A shoulder bag with a disposable diaper. A baby bottle. Infant shoes. Tins of anchovies and tuna from Tunisia and many plastic sandals. “We don’t know what happened to them, but we hope they survived,” prisoner Andrea Volonghi says.

A classic violin is made of fir and maple. But these instruments of the sea are assembled from a softer African fir. It takes about 400 hours for these inmates to create a single violin. The blue, orange, and red instruments still bear the colors of the boats they come from. The paint even changes the way each instrument sounds.

Mario Brunello plays a cello. “These instruments, which have crossed the sea, have a sweetness that you could not imagine,’’ he says. “They have hope, a future.”

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. — Jeremiah 29:11