Notes from the work – state of the sector

The HM Chief Inspector of Prisons Annual Report was published recently. Alongside it, the latest Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) report paints a similarly bleak but recognisable picture.

Both reports describe prisons struggling with violence, drugs, poor mental health, overcrowding, too much time locked in cells, uncertainty about progression, and the challenge of building positive relationships in increasingly pressured environments.

Arts and creativity don’t really feature in either report, which makes sense when you consider that the Inspectorate and the IMB are primarily concerned with outcomes such as safety, wellbeing, purposeful activity and rehabilitation. They are interested less in whether change happens through theatre, sport, mentoring, education or any other particular approach, and more in whether prisons are creating the conditions in which people can progress, build positive relationships and prepare for life beyond custody.

For organisations like Geese Theatre Company the question is therefore not why the arts don’t appear more prominently in the reports, but whether creative practice can help create some of the very conditions that inspectorates identify as essential to safe, healthy and rehabilitative prisons.

What our own research at Geese Theatre Company consistently highlights is that participants talk about strengthened relationships, greater self-awareness, improved communication, increased confidence and a greater belief that change is possible. Wider research, including the Inspiring Futures study carried out by the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge points in a similar direction.

One distinction that strikes me is that inspectorates tend to measure outcomes, while arts organisations are often interested in the processes through which those outcomes emerge – but both are important.

Arts organisations should be able to demonstrate how creative practice contributes to safer and more rehabilitative environments. But we should also be wary of reducing creativity solely to a set of performance measures.

Some of the most important things that happen in a theatre workshop may never appear on an inspection framework. Yet they may be the very experiences through which positive relationships, meaningful activity and rehabilitation become possible.