Inspiring creativity and encouraging personal and social change through the arts

The Prison Arts Foundation is as important as it is unique. Thanks to our pioneering work with people with convictions lives are being transformed and patterns of behaviour changed for good.

Our team of experienced professional artists working across the criminal justice system in Northern Ireland are offering people with convictions a life-line, helping to improve their creative and communications skills, which is key to personal and social development, building self-confidence and unlocking people’s potential.

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Listowel Prison Writing Competition publish their results

PAF writers Magilligan Prison winners include:

  • Poetry Advanced 3rd – Searching for a clue, a guide, a direction
  • Short Story Getting Started 3rd – Nightclub Judges
  • Short Story Intermediate 1st – The White Feather
  • Short Story Advanced Highly Commended – First Impression

Excitingly a PAF writer in Magilligan who was awarded the Highly Commended prize in the Short Story Advanced category last year took 1st prize in the same category this year a fantastic achievement!

Read the 3rd prize ‘Poetry Advanced’ poem:

Searching for a clue, a guide, a direction

Contemplating

A word

A way –

 

Accepting a beginning

Hoping to find expression

Here in my cell

 

Fifteen years and eleven months completed

A life sentence carried with sobriety

An all-encompassing acceptance of reality

 

I walk, surviving in this

Pool of helplessness

And broken hearts

 

There is an abyss of sorrow

Everyday nearer to the clifftops…