Evaluations
Evaluation Report: Community Exchange project between detainees at Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre and young people at West London YMCA
The report explores the project’s impacts on participants’ wellbeing and resilience, awareness and understanding, and musical skills. Based on observations, questionnaires, interviews and focus groups, it contains a wealth of detail about the creative process and the experience of participants. The report also looks at the project as an example of ... read on →
The Arts of Desistance: Evaluation of the Koestler Trust Arts Mentoring Programme for Former Prisoners
This report presents and discusses the findings of an evaluation of an arts-based mentoring scheme that is aimed at prolonging and enhancing desistance from crime through providing former prisoners with opportunities to continue engaging with the arts after release. The evaluation focused both on the implementation and effectiveness of the ... read on →
Write to be Heard: Supporting Offender Learning through Creative Writing
The report explores the impact of a creative writing programme developed to engage ‘hard to reach’ learners in prison. The mechanism was a creative writing competition, incorporating a schedule of workshops in 28 prisons, encouraging entrants to write pieces for broadcast on National Prison Radio (NPR). Using qualitative and quantitative ... read on →
Musical Pathways: an exploratory study of young people in the criminal justice system, engaged with a creative music programme
118 young people engaged in a participatory music programme across eight youth justice settings in England and Wales. The research objectives were to [1] investigate meanings and values young offenders attribute to music, their relationships with music, and its significance to their health, wellbeing, lifestyle and social status; [2] observe ... read on →
Sounding Out - Jim Cartwright
The report followed Music in Prisons as they ran a pilot ‘through the gate’ project which, through music, aimed to provide longer-term rehabilitative opportunities to previous project participants in order to help bridge the gap between life inside and out prison. The key aims were to assist reintegration; impact on ... read on →
Re-imagining futures: Exploring arts interventions and the process of desistance
Carried out by Northumbria University and Bath Spa University, this report highlights examples of how the arts can support positive changes linked to personal agency, efficacy and identity, which are linked to the highly individualised journey of desistance from criminal behaviour. Key findings show that participation in arts activities enables ... read on →
