| Arts mentoring for released prisoners:
a major pilot project
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. The Trust has, in the past, informally supported several individual award winners to go on to careers as writers and painters. We have now formalised this process of support by setting up an ambitious and unique Arts Mentoring Project, shaped to the needs of individual offenders, that will empower them through their transition from prison to the community. Thanks to a 3-year grant from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation , and further funding from an anonymous charitable trust, Koestler has trained a group of professional artists as mentors, and is matching them up with prisoners who have won Koestler awards and are due for release. Working alongside Probation and other resettlement services, our mentors are supporting the offenders to maintain and develop their arts activity in the community. Integrated into our initial 3-year pilot is an independent evaluation, aiming to demonstrate that the arts can have wide-ranging benefits for offenders and their communities – and potentially reduce re-offending.
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Shaun Atwood
Winner of the Hamish Hamilton
Award for Fiction 2008
Mentee on Koestler
Arts Mentoring Project
Freedom is a State of Mind
S.H.
Kalyx Commended Award
for Oil or Acrylic 2008
Mentee on Koestler
Arts Mentoring Project
