| Why prison art?
The value of the Koestler Trust’s work is underlined by testimonies from many quarters. Here are just some:
Roger Graef, film-maker and author, writes:
'The case for art in prisons is not theoretical: it is practical and pragmatic. The arts are not an alternative or an optional extra to education: they offer a far more effective way of reaching the same goals. In place of passive formal classes, the arts provide the first form of learning. Direct experience, lived by the participants who are on the journey to knowledge in ways much more likely to be retained when they leave than the more conventional teacher-pupil relationship. Through art, such learning passes not only through the brain but through the heart.
New efforts to address offending behaviour more directly may prove successful, and educational programme hopefully will lead to better prospects for employment. But the emotional interior landscape of each prisoner – their confidence and sense of themselves as individuals – is not addressed by such work. Art speaks to all of these. It is an absolute essential for people to live peacefully in the world that they be able to express themselves without violence.’
Maggi Hambling, artist, writes:
‘Any artist anywhere, in the South of France or in Wormwood Scrubs, is trying to respond to the motif in front of him or the dream inside him, as honestly and sensitively as he can. And then we can enjoy, loathe or be indifferent to the product… I have always felt very lucky indeeed that I can try to deal with love, hate, fury, despair or passion with a bit of charcoal or a brush-load of paint in my hand. You can paint a murder rather than live with the problem of committing one.
And artists in their work don’t borrow, they steal. And a painting often suffers a lot of abuse on the way to resolution. So artists and criminals have a lot in common. Henry Moore described his work as therapeutic and so do I. Art is free to go wherever the spirit takes us. And that is what we artists, inside or out, appreciate.’
An Award-winning entrant writes:
'I have been very lucky over the years at the Koestler Awards. Apart from selling almost all of my work I have also received the full range of awards…
You know it has been great winning awards and selling my work but the event gave me more than that, it provided me with something positive to talk about with my family and another stepping stone to help me through my sentence.
Who knows what will happen with my art when I get out?’
Judges of the 2005 Prose Awards write:
‘In the hundredth anniversary of Arthur Koestler’s birth it is interesting to speculate on what he would have made of the submissions for this year’s awards. As a novelist, a powerful political thinker and a man condemned to death during the Spanish Civil War (with experience of both Spanish and British gaols) he would surely have applauded the passion displayed in fiction and political ideas and the accounts of prison experience – especially those which go beyond their subject-matter to explore inner meanings... This year entries have ranged from learned Biblical exegesis to fairy stories, from crossing a Falklands minefield to experiencing life as an immigrant, from life as a child in the 1940s to the very different lives of kids today … the Award-winners and Specially Commended entries have taught us a lot and given pleasure, humour, concern and food for thought.’
Stephen Shaw, Prisons and Probation Ombudsman writes:
‘Despite the progress made in recent years in prisons in terms of regimes, the quality of accommodation, and the treatment of prisoners, all jails inevitably restrict the human spirit ... Prison life is grey, monotonous, predictable.
The major exception to this rule is to be found in the arts and crafts rooms in prison education, or in the artefacts made by prisoners in their own cells. Art flourishes in prisons to a degree perhaps unknown in any other institution. It inspires thousands of prisoners, most of whom have shown neither inclination nor talent before entering custody. And the greatest driver of art in prisons in recent years has been the Koestler Trust.
I visit a prison on average every ten days, and I know the enthusiasm the Koestler Awards engender. Prisoners, whose only acquaintance with art and creativity has often been unhappy memories from school, discover skills they never knew existed. The impact on their own sense of self-worth (and, I believe, on their behaviour) is incalculable.
What is also so impressive about the Koestler Awards is the range of work it encourages: from painting to poetry, from calligraphy to carpentry. Through its Annual Exhibition, the Koestler Trust plays an important part too in educating the wider public about the talent that resides in prisons and special hospitals.
The Koestler Awards represent an injection of creativity, humanity and empowerment into the closed world of prisons.’
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