WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHY Sophie Richardson
As of July 2025, England & Wales is home to around 88,000 prisoners – a notably high figure. Prisoners often face overcrowding, limited access to education, and a shortage of rehabilitation resources, with many spending up to 23 hours a day locked in their cells. Amidst these challenges, several organisations are working to offer innovative learning opportunities for prisoners.
Enter Making Time – Every Prison a Creative Hub, an exhibition at the Hoxtonian Gallery featuring outcomes of eight creative co-production engagements with prisoners from HMP Downview, HMP Isis, HMP Standford Hill, HMP Wandsworth, and HMP Peterborough. The exhibition, co-curated by Professor Lorraine Gamman of the Design Against Crime Research Lab at Central Saint Martins and Rex Gardner of Love Print Studio, illuminates the importance of creative and vocational training in these spaces.
Upon entering the gallery, one is immediately greeted by posters adorning the walls, displaying affluent figures from the worlds of sport, music, and design. Titled Heroes, the posters display various role models of inmates from HMP Isis, offering a unique insight into their aspirations. Once carefully venturing up a winding staircase, visitors are met with the main gallery space, where the exhibition’s additional installations await.
One of the key projects at the Hoxtonian Gallery’s exhibition is the kimono jacket created by a prisoner on the Making for Change training and production programme. Established in 2014, the Ministry of Justice and London College of Fashion created the Making for Change programme to teach incarcerated women professional sewing machine skills. Each week, participants dedicate four and a half days to honing their creativity through design and sewing. However, the prisoners are not the only ones benefiting from this programme. During the pandemic, the inmates devoted their time sewing NHS scrubs, masks, and other protective garments for frontline workers.
Meanwhile, other exhibited works come from Open Book. Located at Goldsmiths, University of London, the Open Book programme works to make education accessible to everyone. The programme offers open-access workshops, skill training, pastoral support, and the opportunity to gain an Extended Project Qualification (EPQ), equipping inmates with valuable academic and creative skills. Whereas other programmes may focus on holistic well-being, Open Book brings about tangible change in the form of education.
Visitors to the exhibition are also invited to engage with The Story Inside – a series of films by prisoners. Co-created by Carlotta Allum – founder of Stretch charity, an arts-orientated organisation – and prisoners from HMP Thameside, HMP Peterborough, HMP Isis, and HMP Pentonville, the films offer a narrative of redemption, ushering in change through digital storytelling.
Inspired by this issue’s theme of Resilience, we caught up with Making Time – Every Prison a Creative Hub’s co-curator Professor Lorraine Gamman to learn more about the importance of creativity behind prison walls.
Can you tell us more about the ideas behind the Making Time – Every Prison a Creative Hub exhibition?
Lorraine: Making Time showcases eight projects that demonstrate how co-design and production programmes with prisoners not only generate fantastic objects (fashion, furniture, film and more) but also demonstrate why design and creative education deliver real skills for life outside prison and are not luxury activities. Even though prisoners have more time to “kill” than the rest of us, making time in prison means having a go at actual making.
Many prisoners did not do well at school, over 50 per cent are found to be neurodiverse and often fear or shun the classroom, feeling that education is for them. Yet, they appear to engage with studio culture and making because it’s billed as “doing” rather than learning. Getting men to engage in new activities generates seeds of change that are needed to kickstart rehabilitation. Prisons should offer more creative teaching and making classes. The creative process teaches actual skills and leads some prisoners to rethink who they are, reframe their lives with new ambitions about who they want to be or could be, and eventually change their attitudes and behaviour to “desist” from crime.
How did you find the co-curation process?
Lorraine: Having taught in prison for the last ten years, I was aware of strong creative projects to include in the expo and who to contact. However, my creative colleagues who work for Love Print suggested different ways of exhibiting things. The Heroes posters, created with prisoners from HMP Isis and Here design, for example, have never been shown in this way before – the external renditions look like actual graffiti and the A5 hanging images sort of shimmer and spark debate. I liked the opportunity that different print techniques could offer. So, the co-curation process was enjoyable for me.
The creative process teaches actual skills and leads some prisoners to rethink who they are, reframe their lives with new ambitions about who they want to be or could be, and eventually change their attitudes and behaviour to “desist” from crime.
How do you think engaging in these creative co-production engagements can build resilience and confidence in prisoners?
Lorraine: Evidence shows that prisoners who engage with creative co-production opportunities do well in the outside world because they learn new ways to engage with people and interact, communicate and engage with other individuals. They also develop new identity narratives that often articulate the best future hopes. The films produced by Carlotta Allum of Stretch, a former prisoner, co-created in many different prisons with current prisoners, show this. The films are raw and often hard to watch, but you can hear people seeking to change, straining to find some way out of their lives and looking towards forging new ways that keep them out of trouble.
It sounds crass, but the truth is, if prisoners can articulate a dream of change, they are more likely to change. Usually, prisoners find something new about themselves in the creative process that inevitably stimulates and catalyses new behaviours. Co-production enables prisoners to see their ideas realised and gives them the confidence to imagine they can do even more – offering a lifeline to self-discovery, confidence and resilience.
As someone specialising in Design Against Crime initiatives, how do you see this exhibition fitting into the larger conversation around criminal justice and reform?
Lorraine: I see this exhibition contributing to the conversation in several ways. First, restorative justice and generative criminology emphasise repairing harm and fostering positive social outcomes by addressing the root causes of crime and conflict. Many of the projects shown in this exhibition do this. For example, prisoners have co-designed furniture that does not lend itself to violence, or ligature of easy vandalism. The projects shown also focus on collaboration, community involvement, and creating opportunities for healing, transformation, and prevention rather than solely relying on punitive measures. I hope it makes those who have seen the expo think differently about what can be achieved via rehabilitation.
Are there any specific projects or pieces within the exhibition that particularly stand out to you?
Lorraine: The fashion industry is desperate for talented machinists, and I think Making for Change offers women opportunities to learn these skills inside and out of prison (via the ROTL scheme run at Popular Works – Return on Temporary Licence). It provides not just the skills I have previously mentioned, but entrance into the job market and good jobs. Open Book are also significant because they provide prisoners with a means to assess their work via the EPQ – Extended Project Qualification – worth half an A level that, accompanied by a portfolio, can provide a route into art education. An EPQ (Extended Project Qualification) is a research-based qualification offered in the UK, typically aimed at students in post-16 education (ages 16 to18), but is now extended to adult prisoners and those on community projects. It allows students to explore a topic of their choice in depth through a project, essay, or practical piece of creative work, developing independent research, critical thinking, and project management skills.
Creative education is not for everyone – some people may prefer the sciences, but I find ordinary people and the working class who engage and do not perceive themselves as special, take to making things like ducks to water. Engaging in creative processes is a way of finding out what we can do.
Are there plans to expand or replicate this exhibition with other institutions? What potential do you see for other prison systems adopting similar initiatives?
Lorraine: Yes. We have been offered other opportunities to exhibit the material. I also plan to create an online exhibition so prisoners in all UK prisons can see what is possible and learn from other prisoners’ success. These stories that share pain and challenges are inspiring, particularly to others with similar feelings.
Are there any misconceptions you hope to challenge with this exhibition?
Lorraine: Creative education is not for everyone – some people may prefer the sciences, but I find ordinary people and the working class who engage and do not perceive themselves as special, take to making things like ducks to water. Engaging in creative processes is a way of finding out what we can do.
Finally, what do you want people to take away from this exhibition, and how can they support or engage with programmes like this beyond the exhibition itself?
Lorraine: I want audiences to understand that making is a way of learning real-world skills. It’s not arty farty, but a pragmatic source of learning. Thinking through doing is how most ordinary people learn things. Not everyone is good at writing and maths and individuals should not be written off for that as they often have other skills that creative classes can help them find. The fact that so many prisoners are neurodiverse (ADHD, dyslexia, and more) is also true of entrepreneurs and creatives – all need different ways available to them to learn and shine and should not be written off by middle-class teachers who don’t understand the differences. Creative skill belongs to all of humanity, not just the elite, and I see much creative talent in prison going to waste. Why not try to do something useful with it rather than lock people up to become worse when they get out? I believe every prison could be a creative hub and that enabling creative expression is an unrecognised form of crime prevention.
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