Prison Projects
Since 2001 I have been working as a writer and cultural producer across the prison estate in nearly every category of prison, with both male and female prisoners. This work has taken me into over 50 prisons where I have put together numerous bespoke creative projects. These have involved collaboration with prisoners, other artists, theatre producers, theatres, radio producers, chess masters, former prisoners, academics, scientists and others, including Inside Time and National Prison Radio.
My work in prisons has included the creation of numerous different art forms by prisoners including: plays, books, collections, anthologies, short stories, poems, videos, radio plays, radio programs, calendars, prison magazines, musical events and more. This work has taken place during arts festivals, residencies and special projects – many of which I initiated and raised the funding for.
Below are the covers of some of the books I have put together as part of some of these projects. The TOOLBOX books are a series of bespoke collections of activity that folks can do in-cell with limited resources. They include especially commissioned contributions from former prisoners, people with a working class background, neurospicy folk, scientists, artists, writers, entrepreneurs, comedians and philosophers.
Here’s a few articles that I encouraged the men in HMP Leicester to write:
An article in the Inside Times, written by prisoners about our sci-art project at HMP Leicester, Space is the Place:
NPR Launches into Space
and an article for The Big Issue written by a prisoner, on the return of Ricky Tomlinson to HMP Leicester:
An inmate writes about Ricky Tomlinson’s inspiring return to HMP Leicester
I talk a little bit about prison to Inside Time
“Behind the walls and the wires” John Row in conversation with author, Alistair Fruish