PRISON ART
AND THE KOESTLER TRUST
We are the UK's best-known prison arts charity. We have been awarding, exhibiting and selling artworks by offenders, detainees and secure patients for over 49 years.
Our awards receive over 7,000 entries a year - inspiring offenders to take part in the arts, work for achievement and transform their lives. Our national exhibition attracts 14,000 visitors - showing the public the talent and potential of offenders and people in secure settings.
We have no endowment or capital - our work depends entirely on donations. More
OUR AIMS AS A CHARITY
- To help offenders, secure patients and detainees lead more positive lives by motivating them to participate and achieve in the arts.
- To increase public awareness and understanding of arts by offenders, secure patients & detainees.
- To be a dynamic, responsive organisation which achieves excellent quality and value for money.
2011 has been a fantastic year for the Koestler Awards, we have received:
- In total 7674 submissions, over 2,000 more than last year
- 4905 for visual arts
- 2769 for all the other categories
Thank you so much for your submissions, we have been very impressed with the standard of the work and the curators have had a very difficult job in narrowing down the selection for the UK Exhibition and our Scotland Exhibition.
MENTORING
There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that offenders who have taken part successfully in the arts while in prison fully intend to carry on when they are released, but in practice fail to do so. Like many other positive habits and plans made in custody, arts activity often gets lost in the difficult transition back into life on the outside.
To address this issue we have trained a group of professional artists as mentors, then matched them to prisoners who have won Koestler awards and are due for release.
QUICK LINKS
KOESTLER AWARDS 2012
Our theme for this year is '50'
We are celebrating 50 years of Koestler Awards and inviting Award Entrants to submit a poem, drawing, painting, song or any of the other awards artforms using the number '50 as the inspiration.
The 2012 Application Form and Guidance Notes are now available.
JOIN OUR MAILING LIST
We are now producing a regular newsletter (pdf), to keep everyone in touch with our latest news, future plans and any forthcoming events. If you'd like to receive news on forthcoming exhibitions, Art Sales and projects please sign up for our mailing list.
