Our Impact - Prison Arts Foundation

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The impact of our work

The Prison Arts Foundation has been successfully transforming lives and patterns of behaviour in and beyond the prison environment since 1996. Our teams of experienced professional artists, working with people with convictions, offer a life-line to our students. Through their participation in the arts, individuals have developed creative and communications skills, self-esteem and renewed sense of purpose, all of which are key to personal and social development, to unlocking potential and to reshaping futures. These constructive, creative, interventions benefit society as a whole.

Delivery Statistics 2022/23

1455

workshops

21,399

participant based contact hours

6,597

engagements with people of all ages and backgrounds

48

awards & competitions won by PAF students

How does art help people with convictions?

Author Carlo Gebler, has spent nearly three decades working in the Northern Ireland criminal justice system as a PAF writer in residence. He’s been in all the prisons – including the notorious Maze/Long Kesh H-Blocks – and has done everything from basic literacy to high end literature; letters to victims to Open University essays. As many of the people Carlo has worked with in their cells would testify, he’s spent a long time inside.

Listen to Carlo’s BBC Radio 3 documentary as he finds out if prison arts and education made any difference to the lives of those he taught. He meets PAF writers attending creative writing workshops in the Learning and Skills section of HMP Magilligan. He visits his former boss who each day would tell him his job was not to teach, but to be a human being. He catches up with some of the former students he worked with over many years and finds out what they’re doing now. Looking back at the protocols and practices which characterised his prison work, Carlo asks about the true potential of arts and education when it comes to punishment and rehabilitation.

Listen now

How does our work build foundations for change?

Carlo has observed that, “When a person comes into a prison they invariably meet the one person they didn’t expect to meet; themselves … [and this] … has the effect of turning the psyche in on itself”. With the appropriate support structures in place, this moment of profound introspection, coupled with a person’s need to do something, if only to pass the time, can form a turning point in a person with convictions’ life.

The arts are particularly good at harnessing this potential. The arts provide the tools, the opportunity, the motivation and the encouragement for people with convictions to explore and to express a new, positive sense of personal identity. Participation in the arts improves communications and interpersonal skills and, for many, becomes a route back into education.

Engagement

Artists motivate participation

“My mentor is very inspiring, has a keen understanding of and sensitivity towards my needs as a mentee. She is completely involved in our project and has provided me with consistent practical support which has increased my levels of motivation.””

Competency

Artists deliver activities designed to fulfil participants' potential

“I wanted to focus on, get help with my writing, narrative and storytelling. I was confident in my own ability to complete illustrations but needed support in setting realistic goals for developing my idea of a children’s book. Our field trip to Peatlands Park in Armagh really helped propel our project forward”

Product

Participants create artistic products (visual, writing, music)

“I have recently been able to spend some allocated budget on arts materials. This has been extremely helpful and encouraging.”

Outcome

Publication, exhibition, performance, self-esteem, confidence, skills, knowledge, personal & social development, achievements, accreditations

“The project has helped me to reconnect with my passions and interests. My self-esteem has been built up and I feel that I have something to offer, my first children’s book.”

Research & Reports

We use research and reports to inform the work that we do, encouraging participation in the arts in prisons, secure settings and the community. Evaluation is built-in to all our programmes and events and is essential for making sure our work helps the people that we support.

In this section, you will find a range of publications which we have produced alongside independent partners in recent years, as well as internal monitoring and annual reviews. The evidence contained within, drawn from people with convictions first-hand accounts, provides a valuable addition to the available research material and compelling support for the efficacy of the programmes delivered by the Prison Arts Foundation.

Please take a look at the documents and if you need any further information please get in touch.

My PAF Story

These stories, both student and artist perspectives, shed new light on the experience of individuals brought into contact with the arts whilst in custody.

They show in tangible terms how the arts have a civilising and humanising influence on the prison environment and how people with convictions participation in arts activities contributes to a fundamental change in attitude to offending behaviour, to improved coping skills and to a higher level of social responsibility; even bringing benefits to individual health and wellbeing.

These stories bring into sharper focus the significant impact of the arts on such factors, which are acknowledged as key contributors to successful rehabilitation.