Prison, Pop-Culture, and Transatlantic Perspectives: How UK (ex) Prisoners Interpret American (Penal) Culture

Project Description

The project involves weekly study and creative writing groups for 24 weeks with 30 ex-prisoners (and those at risk of offending) which will result in a published pamphlet of writings and culminating in two key events – a launch event and a film screening with Q&A – involving the participants.

Russ Litten (creative writing tutor & novelist) and Jo Metcalf (Lecturer in Cultural Studies, University of Hull) will work with participants at Humbercare on Westbourne to examine popular prison culture (films, poetry, music) to inspire thought process and enable debate. This will be followed by sessions in creative writing, giving the participants an opportunity to express their personal experiences through artistic expression. Jo and Russ will run two twelve-week sets of weekly sessions with 15 Humbercare service users during each set (30 total), starting in summer 2018. Including the events and evaluation period (reflecting on the effect this artistic involvement may have had on participants), the project will take approximately 12 months to complete.

The first part of this project involving the discussion / writing groups will take place at the Humbercare Centre on Westbourne Avenue in Hull which provides temporary accommodation and reintegration support to 55 service users. Still a reasonably new service, they have seen over 800 individuals pass through Westbourne, with positive outcomes for over 90% of these (eg securing housing or employment). Humbercare work to implement support centred on the individual needs of their service users and for this reason has extensive experience of working in partnership with other relevant services and people, for instance, to conduct training with substance misuse services. Humbercare are also acutely aware of the power of the arts and crafts and have organised many user involvement sessions for different interests including cooking, music and film. In all of their work, they believe that social inclusion is key to successful reintegration into society. With Russ and Jo, the goal is to publish creative writing by participants who have often not had access to arts/culture as an outlet before. In order to inspire writing, we will study a number of prison texts (eg the movie The Shawshank Redemption, poems from Guantanamo Bay and memoirs by Shaun Attwood) to stimulate discussions about contemporary society, including racism / immigration and human rights. This will hopefully lead into more personal stories by participants. To ensure inclusivity, we will offer transcribing support for those with low literacy levels.

We hope that their engagement with the arts and creative writing will support their emotional wellbeing, build their confidence, boost their life awareness skills, encourage them to think about desistance in the long-term, and improve critical thinking and communication skills that can be flagged in job-seeking. We want to engage participants in productive hours that may assist when seeking employment and encourage an interest in current affairs. Most importantly, we want to kindle an interest in the arts, particularly writing. All these factors play a role in participants’ desistance from crime. Scholars have proven a link between creative expression and reduced levels of recidivism and, focus on the prevention of recidivism has been a key step towards reintegration into society.

Once the writings have been collated –Barbican Press have agreed to be the publisher – we will have a launch event, hosted by participants, at Middleton Hall at the University of Hull under the rubric of the Philip Larkin Centre for Poetry and Creative Writing. However, just as we seek to change participants’ own attitudes of themselves, we wish to gently encourage change in the stereotyping of (ex) offenders that persists. To this end, we will invite friends, family, and local community members to listen to participants read out letters to their former selves, poems to Guantanamo Inmates, and other pieces of writing. If needed, Russ will be available to read aloud on behalf of participants. This will be followed by a debate about arts and culture, particularly when participants are at-risk groups. The aim is to understand how the public view (ex) prisoners and counteract their stereotyping.

We will organise a second event shortly thereafter, again in Middleton Hall, where we will screen The Shawshank Redemption, hosted by Shaun Attwood alongside participants. Attwood is a British citizen who was incarcerated in the US for a number of years and wrote a trilogy of successful memoirs about his experiences. He is now an inspirational public speaker who talks at schools and colleges about the problems of incarceration. Shaun will have already visited each of the 15 participants in one of their 12 week groups to speak about his own experiences–as a former prisoner who has engaged with the arts to assist his rehabilitation. The film screening will be open to the public though we will also again invite friends, family and local community members. Following the screening the participants themselves will be involved in a Q&A session with the audience which debates public perceptions of prisoners. The ways in which the film itself challenges how we see (ex) prisoners will be used to get this debate going, and the popularity of Shawshank and Attwood as a “celebrity” author will generate an audience. We anticipate that there will be 150 audience members at each of the events.

After the sessions and events we will conduct community meetings with relevant agencies and service providers in Hull to share our “lesson plans”, detail our approach and experiences, should anyone wish to implement a scheme at their own organisation.