| Frequently Asked Questions
Q. What is the point of providing arts incentives for offenders?
A. The current high levels of re-offending affect us all. To make our society safer, it pays to channel offenders’ energies to positive ends, to build their self-worth and help them learn new skills. The arts are an especially effective way of engaging with offenders who feel alienated from mainstream education and employment, and there is growing evidence that the arts are an effective in changing offenders’ lives. At the Koestler Trust, we monitor and evaluate our activities to review their effectiveness. However, our main role in this debate is to showcase the range and quality of creative work produced in prisons and other criminal justice settings. The artwork we exhibit demonstrates powerfully what offenders can achieve with the right support and educational input.
Q. Is it right that prisoners should benefit financially from their artworks?
A. About 1 in 4 entrants to the Koestler Awards receives a cash prize, between £20 and £60, with £100 awards for Outstanding Achievement. The award-winning works are also put on sale in the annual exhibition, and the cash prize or sale price (less commission) is credited to the private account of the prisoner, young offender or patient. These are relatively small amounts of money but are confirmation of the quality of work submitted and convey a great deal of pride and encouragement. Prisoners can also use the money to help their families, or save it to provide much-needed funds on their release, thereby being less reliant on benefits or the generosity of relatives. 10% of all our sales income also goes to Victim Support.
Q. Where does the Koestler Trust’s money come from?
A.We have no endowment, capital or reserves. Our annual running costs are around £300,000. The Government's Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills gives us an annual grant of £45,000, although this has an uncertain future. For the remainder, we rely on donations from individuals, businesses, trusts and foundations. We are extremely grateful for donations of all sizes. We also run a sponsorship scheme where a special Koestler Award can be named after an organisation or an individual. With the prison population growing in size and diversity, we need more awards to encourage more participants, and we have exciting plans for education, outreach and development of our exhibition. Please support us if you can.
Q. Does the Koestler Trust need volunteers?
A. Yes, we need volunteers every year to assist with our awards, helping to unpack and hang the artworks, and sometimes to help at exhibitions and other events. We are very keen to encourage ex-offenders to work with us as volunteers.
Q. How would you spend my donation?
A. Here are some examples of what we could do with your donation or grant:
£60 will sponsor a Commended Certificate for an offender working in any artform.
£1,000 will sponsor an Outstanding Award in a specific artform. In between, we have a scale of sponsorship rates for different levels of Koestler awards. Ask us and we will send you the options to choose from.
£800 pays for the packing materials we need to transport artworks to our exhibition venues or back to prisons after exhibition.
£1,500 will pay for a professional artist acting as a mentor for a recently released prisoner for a year.
£2,200 will pay for the printing and distribution of a leaflet about the Trust and the awards scheme to go out to all prisons, special hospitals, probation offices and youth offending teams
£2,950 will pay for a special afternoon at our exhibition for prisoners’ families
£3,600 will allow us to give an ex-offender a year’s work experience for one day a week as an arts assistant in our offices
£5,000 will cover all our judging costs – mostly travel expenses, copying and postage – involved in selecting awardees.
£9,000 would help us buy display panels for our travelling exhibition.
Please get in touch if you are interested in any of these areas or would like to discuss other ways in which we could use your contribution.
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