Dear prisons minister James Timpson… Every prisoner should have the opportunity to be creative

Dear minister for prisons James Timpson.

As the daughter of a former prisoner and someone who has taught creative, design education and entrepreneurial skills in prison for a long time, I welcome your appointment. Many recognise that prison rarely rehabilitates, instead it is a criminogenic environment. Prison may cost as much as the best private education, but it traps people in cycles of despair and shame, rarely offering visions of a better life.

In a country, which you have observed is “addicted to punishment”, where only a third of current inmates should “definitely” be in prison” we need a bigger vision. That’s why at Design Against Crime Research Lab at University of the Arts London, we want every prison to be a creative hub to help reduce recidivism and build resilience. This doesn’t just mean creative education for prisoners but also access to soft design skills that can lead to jobs.

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Prison is full of people with creative talent and unfulfilled aspirations, just like the rest of us! Let’s put it to different use…The success of so many art and creative initiatives in UK prisons is already on record. Yet creative projects are still seen as a “luxury” rather than a pragmatic source of skill building.   

That’s why we support the work of Emily Thomas, a radical prison governor at HMP Isis who sees things differently. She created the charity Untold to work with many creative institutions who offer their expertise for free to provide vocational training. HMP Isis is unique because the focus on creativity is a planned approach. Comfort Ayankoya, chief executive of the Untold charity, manages lighting, music, design and other creative educational opportunities for prisoners at HMP Isis, offering a great example of a joined-up thinking.

Recently Ayankoya worked with a design agency and award-winning B-Corp Here to involve prisoners in co-creating the branding and logo for Untold. Kate Marlow, creative partner at Here, explains: “Over a series of weeks, we went into HMP Isis and ran workshops, teaching design vocabulary and giving prisoners the tools to express themselves creatively. In prison, there’s either no, or very little, access to computers or design equipment. We reminded ourselves that you don’t need a computer to do great branding design – it was a really engaging way for both our studio and for the young men to work together and build relationships.”  

HMP Isis prisoners devised the Untold brand strategy and made every decision about logo, colour palette and typography. Inside HMP Isis, the process of co-creation relied on printed materials, paper, and pens. Their ideas were brought to life later in the Here design studio, in between classroom sessions. Back at HMP Isis, the prisoners continued to direct each stage of design development.

HMP Isis governor Emily Thomas points out: “Education in prison is a challenge because we have a lot of young men (around 45%) who have been excluded from school, and missed significant parts of their formal education. A third have recognised neurodivergent issues… We recognise that young men, particularly young Black men, and young men from other ethnic minority backgrounds, need an opportunity to be creative and to find their voice to be able to make some sense of some of their experiences, and to use those to a positive end.”

The young men involved in the co-design process with Here and with other designers I have taken into HMP Isis, reported increased feelings of ownership, creativity, confidence, determination, and hope. “The power of design? Giving those that might not be able to express themselves better in other ways, that opportunity, and maybe not being criticised for it. It gave us a little bit of purpose,” said Liam, a prisoner at HMP Isis.

Through its work, Untold allows young men in prison to feel heard. This is key. Since the brand launch, including the website designed by the young men with Here’s support, Untold has doubled its funding and gained five new educational and industry partners. This prison charity eventually intends to integrate with the formal education system so that its curriculum contributes to a formal arts qualification.  

So I suggest, Mr Timpson that we can make every prison into a creative hub by talking with those who are already doing it. What we know so far is we need to make consistent creative education opportunities mandatory in prison, task governors and well-publicise what’s available. It’s also crucial to link creative education to real qualifications.

Open Book at Goldsmiths are already helping prisoners in a number of prisons to obtain EPQs and gain access to grant funding for creative degrees both inside and when they leave prison. We also need to back Ministry of Justice (MOJ) schemes to employ more qualified returning citizens and involve prisoners in solving the problems they encounter as service users. We need a different approach. Seeing justifiable complaints as design problems “to be addressed via prison industries” is one way. 

And we know it bears fruit. Both the Cell Furniture and Makeright projects from Central Saint Martins, co-designed with prisoners at HMP Stanford Hill and HMP Thameside, provides strong examples of what prisoners can do and how they can innovate inside to fix problems. We should back more schemes like this. We should also encourage more artists and designers – and companies like Here – to work in prison education and industries, including more BAME staff to encourage a “See It to Be It” approach. All of this is game changing.

We are lucky in the UK to already have a civil service design profession. So let’s also set up matchmaking services between these civil servants, prisons, prisoners, lived experience professionals and creative universities, to make a difference.   

As we enter this new Timpson era, I wish you HUGE success. When we give voice to prisoners and when we let them tap into their creativity, often for the first time, it usually changes them. They begin to redesign their lives. Let’s be part of that. 

Yours truly,

Dr Lorraine Gamman.

Dr Lorraine Gamman is professor of design at Central Saint Martins. The show Every Prison a Creative Hub will open at the Hoxtonian Gallery, 76 Hoxton Street, N1 6LP  in November 2024.

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