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 50 years.
Our awards receive over 8,000 entries a year - inspiring offenders to take part in the arts, work for achievement and transform their lives. Our national exhibition attracts 20,000 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.
2013 Koestler Awards
The official Awards deadline has now passed, but if you still have some great work to submit get in touch and we’ll see if we can accept it.
The Application Form and the Guidance Notes are available to download on the Awards page.
Koestler Trust Annual Review 2012
2012 was a great year for us: our 50th Anniversary, Sarah Lucas curating our UK exhibition at the Southbank, a record number of 20,500 visitors visiting FREE, read the full report.
New in publications
Doing Time With The Arts:
The Koestler Trust at 50
As part of our 50th Year Anniversary we have put together a book celebrating the achievements of some of our most talented writers and artists.
We have a special offer, find out more
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.
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.
QUICK LINKS
- NEW - listen to some of our music and performance award winners
- JOIN OUR TEAM - new Development Director post
- New Outreach & Involvement Officer post
- New Arts Worker post
- 2013 KOESTLER AWARDS - Guidance Notes and Application Form now available to download
- SECURE the Koestler Exhibition for Wales
- Arrow in the Blue the Koestler Exhibition for the Midlands
- INSIGHT & OUTLOOK - The Koestler Exhibition for Scotland
- FREE curated by Sarah Lucas, the Koestler 2012 UK Exhibition
- Name an Award
- Who is Arthur Koestler?
- Join our mailing list
The Koestler Trust is now on Soundcloud. Feel free to share these great tracks and leave your feedback.
The Koestler Exhibition
for Wales
11 March – 26 May 2013
SECURE is our first exhibition in Wales at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff
The exhibition has been curated by young people from HMP & YOI Parc. The work has been chosen from entries to the 2012 Koestler Awards from prisons, secure hospitals and by people on probation in Wales.
More on the exhibition, artworks, poetry and writing
