Prison Arts Foundation is a charitable trust that seeks to provide access to the arts for those previously excluded or from marginalized communities.  It engages professional artists in a variety of disciplines to engage, teach, enthuse and give inspiration to people serving custodial sentences in the prisons of Northern Ireland from Juveniles to Adults.  It has a Board of Trustees from both sides of the community who have a commitment to providing an introduction to the arts as well as workshops to promote excellence. PAF works for those who have never had an opportunity to engage in the arts, those already engaged in the arts and also to widen the debate about the value of arts in a society, personally and socially by engaging non-teaching professionals to talk about their work.

This work has wide ranging effects from internal relationships within Prison, [prisoner/prisoner, prisoner/Prison Officer], externally [prisoner/family/community] and is an important part of the creative/contemplative rehabilitation process and links with education and vocational training.

Using creative arts in all possible forms (allowable by security) Prison Arts Foundation through its very capable and sometimes specialised artists set goals and end points for progress in each discipline. This creates elements of planning, prioritization, negotiation and completion which many of this target group need and it produces several transferable skills essential for rehabilitation.

We continue to liaise with prisons, probation agencies, education officers and prisoners to provide on-going programmes and periodic ‘goals’ or end points to focus on so that progress is always maintained towards excellence.

Increasingly, due to our intervention and leadership in prison, we are contacted for post prison work and for continued support and direction.  The PBNI (Probation Board of Northern Ireland) are changing their mode of operation and challenge our organisation to work more with people on custody and supervision orders. This will cause our organisation some degree of re-shaping as this is a challenge to the size of our operation. With more regional work we may need to widen our geographic network. But through our networking and partnerships, we have many ways to offer extra help and guidance.