The Work

Congratulations to all the Award winners. The standard of the work has been really impressive.
We have chosen a selection of the work for the website from the Poetry and Visual Arts categories

• Visual Arts
• Poetry

Audience Choice Award

As part of the award selection process, visitors were invited to vote for their favourite piece of artwork throughout the exhibition, with the top three works receiving the Audience Choice Award.
View the results

Arts by Offenders is the first exhibition to be held in Liverpool of artwork produced by offenders, patients in secure hospitals, young people in secure children's homes and by people on probation in the North West of England. This challenging and thought-provoking collection of paintings, drawings, photographs, sculpture and creative writing, was selected from entries to the 2010 Koestler Awards – a charitable scheme which has been rewarding artistic achievement in the penal and secure sectors for 49 years. The exhibition has been funded by The Co-operative as part of its wide ranging community activity in the North West.

Words of Art

This year's North West exhibition also featured 'Words of Art', a creative writing project with well known poet and author John Siddique. Young people from HM Young Offenders Institution Thorn Cross were invited to write short poems in response to artworks in the exhibition; their responses were displayed alongside the artwork.