NOT SHUT
UP
Issue 25 Summer 2014
£3.50
Distributed FREE OF CHARGE to secure establishments and care teams around the UK
DEAN STALHAM MADE CORRECTIONS CHRIS WILSON BOOKS UNBOUND JONATHAN ROBINSON A MAN STANDING
10 YEARS OF ART & WRITING BY THE UNFREE REPRESENTING PRISONS, MENTAL HEALTH FACILITIES, DETENTION CENTRES AND OTHER SECURE SETTINGS NSUP25 P01 Cover.indd 1
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untitled by nick Blinko, pen and ink
The Inner Self:
Drawings from the Subconscious
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his year, art tutors in London prisons have been asked to submit students’ work for an exhibition called “The Inner Self: Drawings from the Subconscious”. Entrants could submit work in black and white on the theme of the subconscious, using drawing as the primary medium: pen, pencil, thread, moving image and even linebased 3D work. Five artists will be selected for an exhibition at the Café Gallery in Southwark, London, alongside the work of Nick Blinko, an outsider artist who works
exclusively in black and white (you can see one of his intricate pen and ink drawings above). This exhibition will take place in September, and one artist will be chosen as the overall prize winner, which includes an additional solo show at the Julian Hartnoll Gallery on Duke Street, London in November 2014. Matthew Meadows, art editor
Read more from Matthew on page 24, followed by our featured artist interview and gallery...
Matthew Meadows Meet our Art Editor
I’ve been working in the criminal justice system for ten years, mostly in prisons. After a stint as a Koestler judge, the Koestler Trust commissioned me to research and write Insider Art, a book about art in the UK’s criminal justice system, published in 2010. More recently, I’ve been organising oneperson exhibitions for prison artists – all part of finding wider audiences for the masses of locked-up talent – and unlocking it. I work as an artist too, doing lots of drawing and printing strange political wallpaper…
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What is inside? 2 Introduction, Matthew Meadows, Art Editor 3 Art & Writing by the Unfree, Marek Kazmierski, Managing Editor 4 Interview with Jonathan Robinson, author and campaigner 6 ON IT, an extract by Jonathan Robinson 7 Jail Journals, call for entries 8 The Pugilist, fiction by Chris Wilson 10 Poetry Workout, Anna Robinson, Poetry Editor 12 Poetry by Clifford Hughes 14 Artists To Teachers, essay by Alan Clarke 16 Constructing Meaning in a Destructive Place, essay by Matthew Cort West Bank Gallery launch, Made Corrections, photograph by Vaiva Katinaityte
18 The Crooked Mule, fiction by Mark Campbell 20 Down the Barrel of a Pen, essay by Adam Mac 21 The Fallen Tree, fiction by Adam Mac
Art and Writing by the Unfree
22 World War I / 100 years on, a feature
Our tenth anniversary celebrations have been somewhat marred by the recent public outcry over the ban on books being sent in directly to prisoners, but we don’t just want to champion creative processes behind bars, we also want to champion and empower those who help make them happen – staff, librarians, tutors, visiting artists. Hence in this issue you will find lots of interviews and essays from those with experience of working on the inside, alongside our regular poetry and prose selection. We are also starting to look abroad for comparison perspectives, hence our coverage of international projects such as A Man Standing, CRED/ability and Made Corrections – on the front cover we see Dean Stalham, an ex-prisoner artist from the UK and on the back a young offender from Kaunas prison in Lithuania – do the parallels make us think at all? We also want to hear from anyone in prisons, secure hospitals, immigration detention units and any other places of the unfree about the writing and arts provision which is happening there. In just the last few years, we have seen a drastic reduction in arts and education investment in this sector – if you are a practitioner, a student or an artist working behind bars, write to us! Also, check out our Jail Journals competition on page 7. Finding it in you to tell your own story is often the first step in finding your way out of dark places – let’s try and take that journey together.
24 The Arts of the Unfree / unpacked and restored, by Matthew Meadows
23 A Letter to an Unknown Soldier, by Sir Andrew Motion
25 Dean Stalham, featured artist interview 27 Not Shut Up Gallery / Made Corrections 31 The Redskin, fiction by Chris Wilson 32 Books Unlocked: The Sisters Brothers 34 Apocalypse in Rockport, fiction by Craig Roy 37 A book review, by the Prison Librarian 38 A Man Standing, interview with Jean-Marc Mahy 40 Poetry Selection 42 Poetry Feature, interview with Thomas Glover 44 Freeflow Arts, by Matthew Meadows 45 The Artist as Witness, by Lucy Edkins 46 Taste of Metal, fiction from English PEN 47 The Roots of Folklore, by Cliff Hughes 48 The Digital Age, by Piers Barber, Online Editor 49 Poetry & Protest, English PEN & Sonority Turner 50 Keeping in Touch, fiction by Mark Campbell 52 Art organisations worth knowing about 53 About Not Shut Up
Marek Kazmierski / Managing Editor
54 Vaiva Katinaityte: Arts as opportunity
Marek escaped communist Poland as a child and settled in the UK. He is a former prison tutor, creative writing facilitator and most recently Head of Diversity at HMP Feltham. He is also a writer, translator, publisher and visual artist. When not at his computer typing, he keeps sane riding very old, very loud motorcycles.
Not Shut Up is a registered charity (Charity No. 1090610) and a company limited by guarantee (registered in London No. 4260355). Anyone interested in submitting work, volunteering or working as part of the Not Shut Up Academy, which works with in- and post- custody writers on developing their creative entrepreneurial skills, is invited to write in to us or contact us via our website.
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Not Shut Up Academy
Interview: Jonathan Robinson
As a former helicopter pilot, during his incarceration Jonathan kept a log of all that unfolded before him, which then became a book – IN IT. Prison was nothing like he expected. Instead of Shawshank Redemption, he witnessed countless repeat episodes of On the Buses. His new book, ON IT, aims to show ways how we can go from tragedy to comedy to sanity. All through the power of reading and writing. not shut up: Tell us about how you came to be dragged into the criminal justice system. Jonathan Robinson: I dragged myself into it. It was my fault and I don’t want anyone to think for one second that I have – or ever will – moan about being sent to jail. It was my stupid, reckless, selfish and pathetic behaviour… Stealing money from my employer – someone who had put a lot of trust in me – and letting everyone down, including myself. I should have known better. Fact. I am still very ashamed. One of the things that hit me hardest when I landed in prison was how nobody else there had experienced the breaks that I’d had. Top of that list comes education. nsup: You started writing a diary the moment your liberty was taken away. Was this process initially just a distraction? Or did you always feel it might lead to a book? JR: When a Judge tells you that you’re off to Shawshank I reckon there are a number of potential reactions. Some – most – don an overcoat of a gangster Mafia Don hard man persona, others find God, a few shake and rattle like castanets. A minority grab a pen and write – Oscar Wilde for example. In my state of wild (initial) absolute terror I joined the Wilde fraternity and got scribbling. I am certain this was – at first – nothing other than pure escapism. A distraction. I read a piece about my first book recently written by someone who works in prisons and it said that I had used writing as a method of ‘coping’. That really hit me. I had not realised before how much my scribing was in fact a desperate grabbing for a rope on the side of a lifeboat after the vessel that is my life had sunk in front of me. nsup: Did you find it difficult to write a diary, when in prison
there is no privacy? Did you worry about people reading or nicking it from you? JR: No. The material came thick and fast. My only struggle was writing it all down! Most of it, I hasten to add, on scraps of paper somewhere around my knees. Pretty much everyone – staff included – knew I was having a go at writing a book. All – and I stress all – prisoners were nothing other than encouraging. Never any problems, apart from paper supply. In 17 weeks, I wrote 320,000 words!
nsup: IN IT is very different to ON IT. One is a straightforward diary of life in prison, the second is a complex take-down of post-release reality. How did it feel to write two such very different books? JR: IN IT was simply what happened. Then, as I started campaigning about all that is not going on in prison – after the first book came out – and as the denials from management and politicians grew louder, I decided that there was another book in the making. In total naivety I had hoped that the ‘suits’ would say they would sort this out, but all I got was stonewalled. You’ve either got politicians who only think of their next career move or private companies counting the money, prepping to report to their shareholders. Because ON IT is attempting to reveal why the whole prison system is so messed up, it had to be a more serious book – with – I hope, the odd chuckle-maker within. For sure, if IN IT was a plea for prison reform, ON IT is a plea for management reform, and that’s like turning a battleship around in your bathtub. nsup: ON IT is definitely funny, in some ways even funnier than IN IT, as you develop confidence in your mission and more mastery of the storytelling craft. What are your hopes for this
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Interview
“I really hope that the system finally mans-up and acknowledges that what’s going on in jail is a dog’s breakfast.” book? What would you like to see happen as a response to it?
JR: You are very kind – I’m still waiting for someone to say I’m a
bloody imposter author! It is nice that people find my stuff funny. That was – after I realised that I was surrounded in jail by quite a few people with potential – always the idea, an attempt to open a new front on prison reform with comedy. I need to acknowledge the script writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais (big-time) who of course got that ball rolling with Porridge. I hope the nods to them (and awe) are apparent... What do I want from ON IT? I suppose what I really hope is that the system finally mans-up and acknowledges that what’s going on in jail is a dog’s breakfast. ‘Suits’ had every opportunity after the first book came out for someone to show some backbone and say that what I had logged and recorded was wrong – that ‘rehabilitation’ in prison is just dire – and that various events were, to use bog-standard English, bang out of order. They didn’t though… They just looked the other way and/or came up with garbage excuses. Sorry, but I’m not having that. I had to do something. Or at least try…
nsup: You mentioned that even a short stint in prison
becomes a “life sentence”, as one is permanently branded and marginalised upon release. Is there anything we should be asking the powers that be, whether this be the government, the Ministries or employers, to do? JR: Wow. A heavy one. Yes – if you’ve been in prison – you’ve had it. Bouncing back – getting a job – is one hell of an uphill struggle for the masses. Not all of them write books… I think this country is frighteningly bad at accepting that folks who are on release have paid their dues. I have no issue with post-prison supervision, but the time on the naughty step is over. If it isn’t, keep the individual locked up, but letting them out and making life so terribly difficult for them to gain employment is a huge problem. Too many employers run a mile when an ex-offender comes their way.
nsup: What are you working on next? A sequel to ON IT, or something from a different genre of writing? Maybe crime fiction? I believe that sells in spades... JR: The third writing project is in development… but it’s not a book… and it involves another writer… and that’s all I’m saying!
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Photography by Alex Fine
ON IT: an extract
By Jonathan Robinson “Jonathan Robinson writes with wit, charm and humour and slices through claptrap swiftly and succinctly. All dangerous attributes in the eyes of those who held him as a guest of her Majesty. They must have been delighted to see the back of him. Their problem is, he hasn’t gone away and shows no sign of doing so...” Eric Allison, the Guardian “Jonathan’s writing is witty, concise, intuitive and at times delightfully amusing...” Tracy Edwards MBE “A significant writing gift...” Joanna Trollope “Prisoners for years to come will benefit from Robinson’s commitment and energy...” Inside Time
Tag Off
9 March 2012
There was no elation when they came. No rejoicing. I just felt stupid. The date of the contraption being removed from my ankle had been known for ages. The hour was uncertain – the paperwork stated it would be sometime before midnight. In fact, they appeared long before the bongs of that evening’s news and it was all very unexciting. Up we ventured to my room and with a snip – my tagging days were over. The offending grey plastic attachment was removed from the offender and placed in what was either an evidence bag or something for keeping sandwiches fresh in. It could have been either. The receiver contraption with the Del-Boy phone was scooped up and back down the stairs they went. I thanked them and after shutting the front door made my way through the house to the kitchen. The back door was opened.
The hostel had a garden. It had been walked about in before but never in the dark. For since being here – November – a strict curfew had blanketed me. Outside excursions after 18:30 had not been on the agenda for the last four months or so. The view from the open door was soot black. Unfamiliar fragrant cold night air charged at me like a bull. The sensors in my skin questioned my brain (there’s one there, allegedly) as to the change in atmosphere. My decision making process questioned my locomotion. Until now, stepping out was verboten. Brain told foot to continue and outside was trod. This was an airlock. My eyes, adjusting to night vision, focused on the end of the garden. There I walked and stopped, looking all around, forcing myself to take everything in. Get thinking, Robinson. Brain ticked over… consider what your traitorous, Kim Philby behaviour landed you in… how lucky you have been getting off so lightly… most of the sentence was in an open prison… then the rest of it was in a hostel… with a garden…
with beer in the fridge… I felt very guilty again, the paradox paralysing. It was a near full-moon, ghostly scudding slips of cloud dancing across the winking lunar orb like blinking lights at sea. I stood rooted, all at sea. Absorbing. Mulling. This was the end of another part of the journey. I still had another seven and a half months of being on licence to tick-off, but now the immediate restrictions were lifted. I was a free man. Now, the hard work was going to start.
Jonathan’s books can be ordered online via his website www.jonathanrobinson.org or from all good online retailers. For the time being, it is only available in ebook format – who out there thinks ebook readers are a great educational tool for prisons and hospitals? Drop us a line with your opinions! Or better yet, get writing and send us your journals of life before, during or after time spent in any kind of “inside” - see across the page for more details!
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PhotograPhed by Vaiva Katinaityte
Not ShUt UP CoMPetItIoN
Jail Journals
A call out for submissions for the first Not Shut Up book! Inspired by the Prison Diaries project organised by American PEN and Anne Frank House in US in 2009, we are planning to publish a book of Jail Journals from the UK later this year. And it is not only stories from inside cells that we want to read, but we want journals to show the full picture of modern incarceration – stories about:
Life before being imprisoned, and what led to loss of freedom Being locked up, for good or ill Being freed and how it felt Life after release and all its challenges Working in prisons – prison staff, we want to hear from you! Volunteering in prisons – what makes people want to give their time to those in jail? Teaching in prison – how does modern education work or not work behind bars? Families and friends – how does having those close to you “inside” change your life?
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ANONYMOUS!!! All stories will be published anonymously, to make sure you can be honest about your experience, without worrying how this will affect your life, your job or your chance of being free again. Everyone who sends in their story and is chosen for publication will receive a free copy of the book. The competition is open to everyone – inmates, staff, family, friends. Write 50 words or 50,000. If your writing is good enough, we will consider publishing your book all by itself. We really want to hear from those working in prisons, secure hospitals, detention centres, children’s homes and the like. We guarantee FULL ANONIMITY, if you do write to us BCM NOT SHUT UP using your name and PO Box 12 address.
London WC1N 3XX
Or Freepost RRXA-AHGR-ZCZL
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Not Shut Up Academy
ChrisWilson Glue Ponys
Chris Wilson was born in 1961 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and grew up in Dar es Salaam, East Africa. He moved with his parents to California in 1971. After many years of living in the streets and prisons of the USA, he was extradited to the UK in 1998. Since becoming drug and crime free in 2001, he has studied at the Chelsea College of Art and Design, where he was awarded First with Distinction. His work has been shown in galleries in London and the South East of England. He lives in London with his two dogs, and divides his working life between his job as a project worker with the homeless and various creative endeavours. Glue Ponys is a collection of short stories from his experiences of life in the US. The Not Shut Up Academy is helping him prepare the book for publication. Here is one of the stories taken from it...
The Pugilist
Shorty walked like a gimp, his right leg went up and his toe pointed up in the air and then he brought it down and when his heel hit the ground, his whole body jerking forward, then he’d do it again with his left leg and that was how he walked. He was a little white fucker with a bald head and shitty tattoos. He was cut pretty good, though, and he liked to tell people how he was the Nebraska State Bantamweight Boxing Champion when he was in high school. Most people didn’t care much unless they were thinking about fighting him and then maybe they wondered. So I said, “How come you walk like that, Shorty?” And he looked at me like he was weighing up the distance for his left jab then said, “Ah, the fucking Mexicans stabbed me four times in my ass down on Mission and I didn’t go to the hospital, just wrapped it up with bandages and went to sleep, and when I woke up this is how I walked.” “OK.” For a while we played spades together. He could count every card that had been
played and always made his bid, but if anyone looked at him wrong or laughed accidentally he would throw all his cards in the air, pick up the scoring pencil like it was a screwdriver and jump up on the table and make his little speech. “My name’s Shorty Moran and I done five state prison terms with three different numbers and I’ll kill anyone who fucking says another word, got it?!” Usually people got it and they’d shrug and nod their heads and he’d jump down from the table and pick up his cards and put them back in suit and then he’d sit down and say, “Who’s play is it? Come on, man, let’s do this fucking thing, let’s play some spades!” After a while, nobody wanted to play with us anymore and I didn’t blame them. Shorty would come over to my bunk and say, “Come on, London, let’s get a game, I’m fucking bored.” And I’d sigh and get up slowly. Then one day I said, “Listen Shorty, nobody wants to play with you ‘cos you’re a fucking asshole.” And
he looked at me all crazy for a second. “What the fuck did you say?” And l looked right back and said, “You are a fucking asshole.” Well, Shorty just stood there real still. Then he raised his hands up slow like the bell just rang and just stared into his hands for a while and then he started to cry. I mean, he really cried. He just stood there with the snot running down his chin and his little chest heaving out ‘boo hoo hoo hoo’ and all the Mexicans started looking down out of their bunks and the whole cell got quiet and then little Smurf from East Palo Alto started to laugh and that was it, 48 Mexicans threw back there heads and laughed with joy and pointed their fingers at the spot on the floor were Shorty was falling apart. “Shorty, stop crying man,” I said. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You’re really fucking up, you seriously need to stop crying man. This is not good, Shorty. Stop fucking crying!” But it was no use, Shorty was gone, and the next thing I knew was that Mexicans were jumping down from their bunks and
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Fiction
XXXXOUT by Chris Wilson, oil on canvas
gathering in a circle around the spot where Shorty used to be and I can tell they’re hungry and fucking hate his guts. Then one old loco from Sinaloa does a big hawk and pulls up a green lugi from the depths and spits it on Shorty’s face and they’re still for a second to see what might happen. But Shorty just keeps on sobbing and that’s it, they go crazy and they’re spitting and swearing and someone kicks him in the back and he goes down and they go down with him and start punching him on the head and ripping his jumpsuit and Shorty’s not doing anything about it and I think “Oh no, this is all too fucking weird” and I try to pull some of them off him, but they turn on me and pin me to the wall and say “Calmate juero este loco es muerte”.
I don’t know how long it took for the cops to push the alarm and come storming in with their batons and shields and tear gas and start clubbing Mexicans and pulling them off what was left of Shorty, but however long it had been for Shorty it was too long. Then again, I had this feeling that Shorty knew exactly what he was doing and it was all timed to perfection, because he was fucking dead and that had been what he was thinking about when he’d been staring at the place were his boxing gloves used to be, that place on his knuckles where both hands had love and hate tattooed across them. But maybe I give him too much credit, what can I say, at heart I’m an optimist or maybe I just think too much.
So they had some sad little investigation but the Mexicans had covered the cameras with towels and every one swore he just fell out of his bunk and Shorty was a nobody like the rest of us, so after a week of lockdown they just let it lay and I got a new spades partner with a bit more etiquette and ground out my little six months in that shitfuck tank in San Mateo County jail. Oh yeah, he really was, I mean, when I think about it, Shorty was a fucking asshole.
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Anna Robinson’s
Photo by brittany aPP
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Poetry Workout
his workout starts with an apology: something has been going a little awry with our post - so my post bag for this issue had letters responding to workouts from up to 2 years ago. I think this is due to several things; firstly the delights of the postal system (as in that just happens sometimes); secondly, we operate on a shoestring when it comes to funds and staff time; and thirdly, sometimes maybe you find an old magazine in your cell and as literature is timeless, here we go again! In any case, in this issue I am featuring poems that have responded to past issue workouts over the last couple of years, which means there is still time to write your Viking poem (issue 24) as well as respond to today’s exercise. Anon, who is based at Albany on the Isle of Wight, has sent us a poem responding to the workout exercise about imagined rooms. He makes the rooms vivid by remembering a single aspect of each and making a simple statement to that fact. Some are factual statements like “the room where the noisy hoover is”. Some more mysterious like “the room that sung to itself”. When placed together, the whole poem evokes something about the nature of ‘home’ in all its glory. This same man also responded to the collaborative exercise taking a picture from issue 22, he has written a poetic response. Look at the picture again and see what you think. Mark from Norfolk has written us a Haibun - responding to another workout. The haiku and prose writing contrast different weather in the same landscape in ‘A Day Of Two Parts’. As I’m writing this, the news is broadcasting the death of Maya Angelou. A magnificent writer and inspirational person to many, I remember reading the first volume of her life writing saga - ‘I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings’ and I thought that might make a good writing prompt for you on this workout. Here we are late Spring into Summer. Birds are very active
and in much prison poetry, represent freedom. The caged bird of course does not have that, but it still has a song. As Angelou said “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” What song does your caged bird have? Is it answered by a song from a sky borne bird, or does it get ignored? Write a two verse poem - one from the point of view of the caged bird and one from its free cousin. These could even be mirror poems - like palindromes - which are the same (or similar) read backwards and forwards - ‘Madam I am Adam’. Here is an example from a longer poem called “wind farm at tilbury” by Debbie Potts, which was published in a pamphlet called “Dark Flow” (Thamesis Press): treeless as iceland above the bloated silos and criss-cross pylons whale-bone white stems outgrow the saltmarsh and cut feathery veins in the skyline … the skyline’s vein cuts feathers in the saltmarsh outgrowing white stems of whale-bone pylons and criss-crossing the bloated silo of treeless iceland In this poem Debbie Potts doesn’t exactly invert what has gone before - so it’s not an exact mirror - but in making it not exact she
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Punch and Judy convention at Gt.Yarmouth / Donald Grayson / Acrylic on canvas
keeps the sense reflected and it doesn’t come across as too heavy handed or pointlessly clever! Try this with your bird poems - one way for the caged bird and the other for the free. Remember you can take liberties! We also have in this issue not just one, but two ex-unfree poets who are now forging ahead with writing careers! Thomas Glover who has just had his first book published and our very own Clifford Hughes, who won two Koestler prizes last year and now, on the out, is continuing to be published with an exciting future ahead of him. They are working with our Academy to help develop their careers we hope you find their work inspiring. As ever Happy Writing! Anna Robinson, Poetry Editor
Anna Robinson
Meet our Poetry Editor After eight years as HMP Brixton’s librarian, I set up Not Shut Up with two colleagues so that we could produce the kind of magazine we wanted to. As well as editing the poetry pages and judging the poetry section of the Koestler Awards, I write poetry and teach at the University of East London. My second poetry collection Into The Woods will be published by Enitharmon this summer.
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Poetry
Appeasement In the first frozen minutes of a new year, back when I was seven years old, I remember warming my hands over a heap of holly and mistletoe, fresh from the parlour, hissing and crackling in the yard, and watching the man who would one day become my father-in-law hold a wriggling rabbit in one hand, while the other slit its throat, letting blood drip on moonlit ploughshares. To make sure it’s a good ‘un was all he’d say. And his wheezy laugh billowed out like smoke to catch the stars.
Long Man When the old gods walked among us, before the coming of a new god swept all certainties away, you arrived like a mighty warrior with one thing on your mind, weapon unsheathed and ready. From the land of giants you came, long before the written word, striding out of that hillside, proud, erect, benevolent bestower of procreative power. Our salvation. How many lusty youths basked in your image? How many virgins spent sultry nights with you? How many generations ‘till those prudish Victorians came in the night, pinned you flat like a paper doll, redrew your boundaries, emasculated you? Sad eunuch with two sticks in this age of drugs and IVF, how pretty and pointless are you now?
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Cliff Hughes, Not Shut Up Academy
Mercury Falling I met you on that feral night when fire dripped from trees and the comet was consumed by its fury. You standing unconcerned and open, looked up to where I trod the wall. Twin tails stretched from one year to the next, dark matter sprinkled with sugar and you in your childhood village. Globe turned me giddy with the probability of failure, my optimism an instrument to measure degrees of despair. Magnetism touches nothing, feels like nothing, is nothing. Yet something nearly lifted me on that bleak then and there. Years, minutes, seconds – behind the calm, the pressure building. You waited, never changing, the long-avoided question slips away. Snow is drifting in the streets – no one can walk, the tap in my kitchen frozen. Looks like the final winter is coming in. Rich and poor are meaningless – we are all trapped in this moment of imagined comradeship. But let us pray a thaw begins before the food runs out.
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Essay
ARTISTS TO TEACHERS
by Alan Clarke, European projects manager for The College of Teachers “Often, art in prison is best seen as a hobby to keep people occupied and at worst as a waste of time.” Edīte Neimane, Latvian theatre director and actress
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n the UK, we have a long tradition of using the arts in education, not just for developing art-form skills, but also as a generic teaching method. And yet, artists are often reluctant to develop teaching skills which should help them work in the dramatically difficult environment that is prison. I remember in the late ‘50s witnessing the impressive work that the Brian Way’s children’s theatre group did in schools, and later in the ‘70s experiencing an eye-opening session by the influential drama practitioner Dorothy Heathcote, using improvisation with junior pupils. So when I myself started teaching, mainly in further education, I was very conscious that students taking, for example, a BTEC course in Performing Arts were gaining not only the competencies to carry out specific art-form tasks, but more importantly acquiring basic life skills – communication, problem-solving, working with others, taking personal responsibility for their actions. On the other hand, in Germany, a country I lived in for many years, there is a different educational tradition. The school curriculum focuses on the more traditional academic subjects, mainly delivered in formal ways. The opportunities to explore
creative areas comes outside school hours, often through arts practitioners and external groups. So for them a clear division exists between the role of “the teacher” and “the artist”. This is not always helpful. In a recent pilot of the CRED/ability programme, a training course for artists to work in prisons, run by the Prison Arts Foundation (PAF) in Northern Ireland, the tutor actually experienced resistance from some of the twenty professional artists on the course. They used familiar arguments: “We’ve been working effectively as artists in prisons for X number of years; why do we suddenly have to be taught how to teach?” In their case, apart from providing them with a unique opportunity to develop new skills for free, the situation in Northern Irish prisons now demands that anyone delivering to prisoners there must have some form of teaching qualification. Nevertheless, the grumbles still persist. To counter this, I point out that using teaching methods does not turn an artist into a teacher per se, it simply enables her or him to be more effective. Once artists decide to communicate their skills to others, they inevitably draw on pedagogical strategies. This is especially true of delivering artistic interventions
to prisoners, whose literacy and communication levels are generally very poor, whose awareness is often weakened by drugs or alcohol, and who are often resistant to the ‘normal’ methods used in the outside world. Just as school teachers need to be properly prepared and have a range of approaches to cope with the many situations they will encounter in the classroom, so artists too need to have a large tool-box of strategies in order to function effectively in a prison context. “When it worked, it was great. It was hard to dip in and out of the guys’ lives. The work we did required some self-introspection and it was difficult to have enough time to get the guys to that level of openness. And once or twice when they did, it was horrible to have to pack up and send them back to their cells, having just opened up some painful stuff in conversation. More time and a more caring approach from the whole prison system would have made the big difference. It’s not just teaching, it’s much more than that.” Nuala McKeever, an Irish actress & comedienne
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CRED/ability
LITHUANIA GETS STREET-WISE
H
ip-hop, Banksy, street art: these are not topics that you’d normally associate with Lithuanian prisons. Especially as, like me, you’d visited Vilnius high security prison five years earlier as coordinator of a previous European project, The Will to Dream – an experience which sticks strongly in my memory. A group of theatre practitioners and teachers were given an introduction to the prison by an officer who boldly asserted: “We have no drug or gang problems here!” Later, we discovered why he would claim that: against all human rights principles, prisoners were only being allowed to associate with one other inmate! So when a dozen of them attended an animation workshop run by a Swedish partner, they spent five minutes exploring animation techniques and the rest of the hour talking animatedly with their fellow inmates. As one of them told me: “That’s my best friend over there; he’s on the same wing, but I haven’t seen him for over 2 years!” So, when as part of the CRED/ability project, a number of us participated in a Lithuanian conference about prison art last year, my expectations were not particularly high. This impression had already been strengthened by feedback from a questionnaire that the project had circulated concerning prison art in our partner countries - Germany, Latvia, Lithuania and the UK. In this, the Lithuanian situation had been defined by comments such as “very few artists have worked in correctional institutions” and there were “no traditions to carry out social arts projects at Lithuanian correctional institutions”. A further complaint was of a “lack of people willing to engage in artistic activities and staff to properly carry out such activities.” A year later, in May 2014, a couple of the CRED/ability team returned to Vilnius to support a two-day piloting workshop at the University. We encountered a very different situation. Lithuanian street artists shared their experiences of working with disadvantaged people, including the Made Connections project in Kaunas prison. On the second day, Nancy and I presented other stories of prison education, including evaluating video examples of an arts exhibition by prisoners in the visitors’ room in Maghaberry, the largest male prison in Northern Ireland; the first professionally-led drama production in a Bulgarian prison, funded by The Will to Dream; and a series of workshop for inmates
PhotograPhed by Vaiva Katinaityte
led by a female hip-hop dancer in Oslo Prison. Also emerging from the workshop was a very different impression of the use of art with inmates. One prison worker described how paintings had been used to transform the environment in their prison and the positive effect it had on the general atmosphere. At the end of the sessions, Vilmante expressed her delight at the positive impact our visit had had, and her confidence in being able to run the training programme at the university, enabling artists, social workers and others to improve their use of art as an integral part of prison activities in her country. Later on in this issue of Not Shut Up, you can read about the Made Corrections project which, in association with the international street artist JR, brought creative activities into a youth correctional facility to Kaunas in Lithuania, proving artists can be teachers, with the right training and thinking in place. Already, even before the project is completed, there is active interest in running the training programme in a number of countries, including Northern Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania and Bulgaria. For more information on the CRED/ability project, visit www.cred-ability.eu or email alanruscoe@yahoo.co.uk
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Essay
CONSTRUCTING MEANING IN A DESTRUCTIVE PLACE
by Matthew Cort, art tutor at HMP Wormwood Scrubs
I started working as an art teacher at Wormwood Scrubs in the mid 1980s, having been invited in through a contact working in the Education Department. Then, as now, education was undergoing cutbacks, and a part time art tutor was needed to replace the full time person (who eventually stayed on for another 15 years!). Since then, I have taught adults elsewhere, both in and outside prison, but Wormwood Scrubs is currently the only place I teach in. When I started there, I had been out of art school (St. Martins) for a few years and was practising as a fine artist as well as doing occasional jobs as an art director and prop maker for music video companies (anyone who remembers the Scottish pop group Big Country or an Arabic-language advert for powdered milk featuring Muhammad Ali may have seen my work). Since then, I have always taught part time to make room for my own artistic practice, and while working as a teacher I have also been able to make time to exhibit at, for example, the Royal Academy, Royal College of Art, Hayward Gallery Pavilion and Saatchi Gallery, as well as gain an MA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths and Diplomas in Philosophy and History of Art and Architecture at Birkbeck. My teaching usually involves not knowing who will turn up on a class: typically most of my learners will be beginners and improvers, but some may have professional experience and the occasional one may even have an arts degree. I have also found that the parallel careers of artist and teacher can benefit each other: teaching is one way that an artist can stabilise an otherwise uneven income while staying focused on their subject area; and maintaining an artistic practice gives the teacher some authority in giving practical demonstrations and first-hand advice on the professional aspects of art, such as presentation and reception of artworks, study and work opportunities etc. Very early in my teaching career, I found that my students often understood artistic concepts intuitively, only thinking they did not understand them because they were ‘missing something’ – in fact, I have often
been challenged less by having to explain artistic concepts in simple terms than by having to show that many of these are not particularly complex in the first place. I have also been able to overlap the two careers by taking several opportunities to organise special projects within the Art Department involving visiting artists, some with international reputations, and galleries such as the Hayward and Lisson. Prisoners might be surprised to learn that the environment they inhabit is often considered exotic by those who have never set foot inside it, and many high-profile practitioners will gladly take the chance to work on a project inside Wormwood Scrubs. Involving prisoners in such art projects exposes them to contemporary practice which, unlike that found in art history books, can be directly experienced as something being developed by artists who can be talked to directly. Wormwood Scrubs itself has some claims to artistic fame, with some significant artworks hidden around or associated with it. Its Grade II listed C of E Chapel has a series of oil paintings depicting saints around the altar which were painted by Victorian prisoners and are said to represent people working or living in the prison at the time. On the inside of the north wall are 8 monumental paintings by the contemporary artist Julian Opie (b.1958) (the painting of which I co-ordinated in 1994), which can be glimpsed from many north-facing viewpoints. Fans of the charity exhibitions held in different cities each year under the title Cowparade may have seen the two painted fibreglass cows produced in Wormwood Scrubs in 2002 - they may even have bought one of the china replicas made from Tattooed Cow, the cow sculpture I painted with inmates there. Wormwood Scrubs is also home to the Koestler trust, where artworks from across the UK are sent annually to be judged for the Koestler Awards. When I started teaching, Wormwood Scrubs was a Category A prison, but it is now has Category B status with prisoners staying for an average of roughly 2 months, so teaching has to be planned for short term outcomes. One of the greatest changes I have witnessed is the recent full-scale privatisation of prison
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Celebrating Prison Arts
China replicas made from Tattooed Cow, the sculpture painted by inmates of Wormwood Scrubs in 2002
teaching that redefines the achievement of art qualifications in terms of financial profit and loss. In the near future, activity in the Art Room might continue only if it makes a financial profit according to Government targets. The Annual Koestler Awards scheme is a useful counterbalance to simple instrumentalist thinking, not least because it advertises the benefits of art as an end in itself, building self-confidence and positive social interaction. It also offers recognition and measurable achievement to prisoners without too many accountants being involved. The current government’s opinion is also that prison education should lead directly to employment and, responding to this, I recently produced a wall-chart detailing jobs in art and routes into them. The large number of categories that rapidly filled it graphically illustrated the undoubted economic significance of the arts to the UK economy (every pound invested in culture in the UK generates a four pound return): my biggest challenge was fitting all the categories in, and the list was not exhaustive, partly because new categories are appearing, such as those utilising new technologies.
Imprisonment has the curious effect of bringing out dormant artistic talent in the most unlikely cases and if this is a good thing, art education should continue nurturing this. However, simply focusing on possible employment could eventually exclude certain groups that could benefit from this support such as, for example, those who have jobs to return to; are retired; have severe mental health issues; have severe drug addiction; are serving a very long sentence; are terminally ill. If we must use economic cost/benefit criteria, I would argue that a more subtle application would still justify the funds spent on art education: art departments can (and do) provide a service for prisons by, for example, supplying inexpensive original artworks to ‘humanise’ spaces such as visiting areas, corridors etc.; offering an activity known to help counteract low self-esteem and negativity; and simply by supporting constructive, meaningful interaction in a place where absence of purposeful activity sooner or later leads to all sorts of destruction.
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Fiction
THE CROOKED M by Mark Campbell, HMP Ryehill
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arly morning, outside his front door, darkness was cover enough for Rob to walk down his garden to an overturned flower pot and pick up the package. Small, lightweight, shaped like a tobacco pouch wrapped in cellophane tape. Robert looked around. The delivery had been made while he was asleep. He walked back inside, sat on the couch and took off his left shoe and sock. He picked up a blue neoprene ankle support and slid the package through the slit he had made on the inside. I have to lose weight, he thought to himself as he bent over to wrap the support round his foot. He couldn’t afford to be sloppy. Six weeks earlier, he’d been approached in the pub by a “mate of a mate” who had offered to buy him a drink. Rob, whose tongue had been loosened by alcohol, was eager to tell someone, anyone, about having done some tours of Afghanistan and the land mine which had left him with a permanent limp and an honorary discharge. Two years on, the dole had left him raging against a system that abandoned those prepared to serve their country. Finally, he was offered work in the prison service. His new friend seemed sympathetic, while they watched the football and talked about how difficult it was to make ends meet and support families in the new economic climate. By the fourth meeting, his new pal suggested that there might be a way for him to supplement his income, right some of the injustice done to him and his family by the ‘system’. “Listen mate, I’ve got a friend who knows somebody who’s got connections with people who are willing to pay easy bunts for a smart bloke like you. At least a grand a month for doing a little light work. Think about it.” Rob sat upright, trying to clear his head. His conscience warned him against the risks, but booze and anger and thought of that extra cash was doing his calculations for him. It was common knowledge that other officers were up to the same thing. It wasn’t like he was harming anyone and, in any case, he could stop just as soon as he had enough to buy a few little life extras. After all them
months he’d been away, of worrying whether he would ever come home, Alenka and the new baby bloody well deserved some treats. The day of the first delivery began with his normal routine, the bedside radio crackling into life at 05:30. He strode to the bathroom, dressed for work, getting his thoughts in order. Finally, he headed for the front garden. There was never to be contact between him and the courier. With his shoe back on, he walked out to the car. He had slipped easily into his new role as a mule. The people he worked for were well organised and after the first delivery his friend no longer came to the pub. He had only ever known him as John. All communication was through the flowerpot. Packages would be dropped off overnight, with typed instructions of where to deliver and payment would be made the following night. He was to never open the package and he did not want to either. At the gate, there was the usual security check, fingerprint scan, ID card, a walk through the metal detector. The last hurdle was Dan, a DST officer, who gave him a full rub down. His hand brushed the neoprene. “How’s the ankle?” “Doctor says I need to lose more weight or I could easily slip again.” Rob had made an obvious fall on his bad leg the previous week in the staff canteen to lay the groundwork for his injury. “Tell me about it. I nearly landed on my arse the other day too! Are you suing? Might earn yourself a few bob or a couple of weeks off, hey?” Dan straightened and moved to let Rob past. “No, I’m no scrounger. Had two years of that. Get bored sitting at home.” “Don’t overdo it though!” Dan laughed, turning to the next officer coming through. Rob headed for C wing. He commenced his round, opening cell doors and returned to the bubble to deal with petty requests from inmates. He looked up instinctively, feeling the presence of someone looking at him. A tall, fit man in a white t-shirt, designer
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kitchen. Inside the envelope was a bunch of wrinkled twenty pound notes. He felt horrible, handling the cash. This was it. It was over. As he stood holding the money, he knew he had to stop. The incident with the visits find had played on his mind all day yesterday and he tried to imagine himself one day wearing those same prison greys. Soldier to screw to smuggler. He felt sick in the pit of his stomach, carrying breakfast up to the bedroom where Alenka was holding up their baby in the air, making gurgling noises to which their daughter responded with tiny giggles. He put down the tray and tried to smile.
D MULE jeans and pumps was casually chatting to another offender by the snooker table, but his gaze kept flicking in Rob’s direction. Their eyes locked briefly and Rob felt an uncomfortable shiver down his spine. The look was contemptuous, arrogant and he was forced to look away. He felt weak at having to be the first to break eye contact. Did this prisoner know something? Was he part of the operation? He lifted his head once again, but the offender had moved on, heading for the gate that would let them out to the workshops, into the main pathways that linked all the corners of the prison like a giant spider web. Rob followed out into the gardens and into a greenhouse. It took only a second to bend down, remove the package and place it inside the empty watering can with a broken spout, as advised. Offenders sat at tables with their friends and loved ones on opposite sides. A barrier under the table prevented anything being passed across. Rob had to keep his eyes peeled and be vigilant to anything unusual. After an hour, he spotted a young girl leaning over to kiss her boyfriend and, as her hand curled up behind his neck, she slipped a package behind his collar. He called over a colleague, who was standing close by. They rushed over to the table. “Up you get! Hands behind your back!” “What the fuck! Get off me bastards. I isn’t done nuffing! Leave my girl!” Rob and the other officer stood on each side of the inmate, holding his arms down. As he was escorted to a nearby room, everyone briefly looked up and just as quickly returned to their own conversations. The police would be here in a while to arrest the girl. Seg would be waiting for the prisoner. The next morning, Rob went downstairs in his pyjamas and dressing gown. It was his day off. Without bothering to put on his slippers, he walked barefoot out to the gate. A quick scan showed no one was around. He lifted the flower pot and recovered a brown envelope. He slipped it into his pocket and walked back into the
The following week, he left a note to say he would not make any more deliveries. He took off the neoprene support and went to the gym for the first time in three years, feeling like a new person, all his regrets and excuses pumped away as he worked on his tight muscles. He had a job. A wonderful daughter and wife. He would make the best of what money he had. Who knows, in time he could get promotion, earn more money. He went to make a perfunctory check of the flowerpot the next morning, expecting to see nothing, but there was a package as usual, this time with a hand written message on top: “You work for us now. We will tell you when it is finished. Else the law will be told what’s what. Your time behind bars will be made hard, soldier boy. Make the drop.” Rob’s new optimism burst like a soap bubble. He had not expected this, sure he could stop when it suited him. He was in a lot more trouble than he had imagined. All his bravado was an illusion. The more he thought about it, the more angry and confused he became. Post-traumatic stress disorder. That’s what the doctors had said made him so easy to anger after his last tour. Now his new job was turning to hell. He needed to go out for a drive to clear his head, see if he could think his way out of this trap. Alenka wondered why Rob hadn’t come back from the shops when the door bell rang. She went downstairs carrying baby in her arms. A shadowy figure moved behind the glass front door. “Mrs. Lowry? May I come in please?” She let the two plain clothes officers inside. She knew Rob had been acting funny recently. And had more money than usual. She wasn’t a stupid woman. Knew what was what behind the bars of his new workplace. How would she deal with the scandal? And if they locked him up? A veteran? A hero to Queen and Country? What would Mum say? And the neighbours? “I’m sorry to have to tell you that a man was killed at a railway crossing a few hours ago. We believe it may be your husband, from the documents found in his wallet. I am deeply sorry, but we need you to come in and identify the body. If you require a family member or social worker, we can contact someone to come with you... Ah, is that your baby crying upstairs?”
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Not Shut Up Academy
DOWN THE BARREL OF A PEN: The Diary of a Writer on the Wrong Side of the Wall, by Adam Mac, HMP Wakefield
I
can’t remember ever reading a story which didn’t include characters. Sometimes they’re men. Sometimes women. Usually they’re both. Occasionally there are animal characters too. There could even be alien or monster characters. But there’s always at least one character. So how do you make your characters believable? How do you convince your reader that they are real people with real lives and real thoughts and feelings? Sometimes you won’t have to, especially if it’s only a minor character. But if you want your reader to really relate to them, then you have to know and understand them yourself. Some writers get their characters from aspects of themselves. They use their own thoughts and feelings as the base and then build up from there. Others use people they know or people they see around them. I tend to create my characters from scratch, not basing them on anyone in particular. But, however you find your characters, what’s important is giving life to them. When I find myself struggling with this I try to imagine how my character’s father, wife, best friend, or boss might describe them. After all, they live and work with this guy, I’m just the writer. They know him much better than I do! A while back, I was struggling to create a character who I knew would die at the end of my story. I couldn’t imagine what his life was like, so I found it hard to write about him as if he was a real person. In the end, I tried something very different. I wrote a short story from the point of view of my character’s wife as she sat by his grave, talking to him. It allowed me to really build up a picture of what people thought about him and how he was regarded by his family and neighbours. From that, I knew I was ready to build this guy up into a real person and get back to writing about him in my real story.
So give it a go. Next time you have a character in mind who doesn’t feel real yet, write something completely different. Write about what his wife says at his grave, or what his father says to him in a letter, or even what his son tells him in the pub when they have their first pint together. Have a read of what my character’s wife had to say to him on the page opposite...
Not Shut Up Writers’ Academy
Our Academy is a network of unfree and ex-unfree writers working together to develop their professional careers, helping them reach new audiences, generate income and overcome barriers to mainstream success. Not Shut Up aims to strengthen their writing, editing and promotional skills, offering experience of working on the magazine, networking, live events, multimedia and publishing. All genres of writing welcome! If you are an unfree/ex-unfree writer interested in joining, please write to us: Not Shut Up Academy, BCM NOT SHUT UP, PO Box 12, London WC1N 3XX, Freepost RRXA-AHGR-ZCZL
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his is so fake. I know you can’t hear me and if I wanted to talk to myself I could do that at home. I’ve never understood why people do this. Your Mother said it would help me to come to terms with it, but she won’t accept that I just don’t want to talk to anyone any more. What’s the point in talking when there’s nothing you want to say? I did tell her I’d try though. You’d like your gravestone. Your brother picked it out. It’s black granite with golden oak leaves and acorns around your name. It gets quite hot in the sun and it sort of feels like your body heat. I know that sounds silly, but... He compared you to an oak tree in his eulogy too. Tom, I mean. He said you were the sturdiest member of the family and that you had always watched over us. Then he promised to do the same from now on. Sounds nice enough, though I haven’t seen him since. Your Mother has the opposite problem. She’s barely left my side since you went, treating me like I’m going to fall apart any minute. She won’t even let the boys play when I’m in the room. Jacob got into a fight at school. I spoke to him about it and I’m pretty sure it was a one-off. One of the older boys was teasing him and he lashed out. He promised it wouldn’t happen again. Toby has been quiet. I’ve been trying to get him to open up a bit, but every time he does your Mother just tells him to be brave and not to cry. I’d like to ask them to give us some space, but your Dad has been amazing. He’s been keeping the garden going and I think that helps him too. I don’t think I’d know where to start if it were left to me. If I could ask Ruth to leave and hang on to Joe I think I probably would. You know she’s never really liked me. I had to go for a walk yesterday, just to get a bit of peace. I went up across the heath and around the pond. The weather was a
Brothers by Jason Whitley, hMP Cardiff
FALLEN TREE
by Adam Mac
blessing. Sunny, but not too hot. Up at the pond, where all the birches stand, one of them had fallen near the path and I just sat on it watching the world turn for a couple of hours. There are still no geese. I haven’t seen any all year. Plenty of ducks, though. The ripples they sent across the water looked almost silver in the bright sun. It still smells foul up there, somehow. Must be a sewage leak somewhere up that way. You’d think that might be the perfect place to get a bit of peace on a Wednesday afternoon, but I’ve never seen so many people up there in my life. Almost all of them knew you and had something to say. I didn’t recognise half of them. I walked down the high street on my way back and that was even more crowded. No one tried to speak to me though, so at least that’s something. I really wish I didn’t have to talk to anyone. Not your Mother, not your friends, not even you if you can’t hear me. And I definitely don’t want to talk to myself. I don’t even want to hear myself thinking. I’ve been searching for a bit of
silence ever since you died, but wherever I go, there I am, talking again. The thing is, Jack, I’ve only really existed in relation to other people. I was what, nineteen, when we got married? I went from being a daughter to being a wife, and then a mother of course, and with you gone it feels like you’ve taken a large part of who I am with you. It’s like I’ve lost a leg but I keep trying to walk on it. Ruth seems to be doing all the mothering now and with my family up north what’s left to define me? I feel as dead as you are. Like a ghost that walks around just looking for some peace. It’s purgatory, Jack, and I’m starting to think life is wasted on the living. Maybe Tom was right. Maybe you are the oak of the family, even now. Maybe that’s why we’re all so lost. You’ll understand why the last thing I want to do is talk then. Talking won’t change anything. It’s better to just get on with it. And I think I better had. I will be back though. Tomorrow. With some flowers. At least they manage to speak without words.
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World War I / 100 years on
A LETTER TO AN UNKNOWN SOLDIER
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A new kind of war memorial, Summer 2014
e know a great many ex-service men and women are homeless, in secure hospitals or in prison. From Wednesday 21 May, LETTER TO AN UNKNOWN SOLDIER, a brand new initiative, is open to receive your letters. Created by Neil Bartlett and Kate Pullinger (Chair of Not Shut Up) and commissioned by 14-18 NOW WW1 Centenary Art Commissions, LETTER TO AN UNKNOWN SOLDIER is a new kind of war memorial – one made only of words. Up until 4 August, everyone can contribute their letter, by visiting the website 1418NOW.org.uk or sending it by Royal Mail to LETTER TO AN UNKNOWN SOLDIER, PO Box 73102, London EC1P 1TY. Artist Bob and Roberta Smith is to join more than 50 writers, including Kamila Shamsie, A L Kennedy, Stephen Fry, Andrew Motion and Malorie Blackman, who are writing their letter to an unknown soldier. The inspiration for the project is the Charles Jagger war memorial on Platform One of Paddington Station, which features a statue of an ordinary soldier in battle dress, reading a letter. Neil Bartlett and Kate Pullinger said: “2014 is already proving to be a year jammed-full of remembrance. For us, the creators of the project, it is important to move away from the usual imagery associated with war and commemoration. We’d like instead to hear what people think
– what they really think – and for them to write to the unknown soldier a letter. If they were able to speak to him now, with all that has been learned since 1914, and with all their own experience to hand, what would they say? “This is everyone’s chance to be part of a new national conversation about remembering the Great War, and to have
their voice heard. Their letter will be published online alongside those of our commissioned letter writers, and the entire collection will be added to the British Library web archive at the end of the project.” Fifty writers from England, Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland have already pledged to write letters to the soldier. These fifty include writers as distinguished and different as Alan Hollinghurst, A L Kennedy, Andrew Motion, Andy McNab, Bonnie Greer, Caryl Churchill, Daljit Nagra, David Almond, Deborah Levy, Esther Freud, Geoff Dyer, Glenn Patterson, Kamila Shamsie, Lee Child, Liz Lochhead, Malorie Blackman, Owen Sheers, Sebastian Faulks, Sheila Hancock and Stephen Fry. You can read Sir Andrew Motion’s letter on the page opposite – please join him in writing one yourself. He chose to write his in verse form, but yours can be a song, a personal statement or a classic letter. Already signed up to sit down and write are a choir in Derbyshire, writing groups in Derry, prisoners in Buckinghamshire, nurses in Hull, cookery groups at the Empire Café in Glasgow, local historians in Monmouthshire, ex-service men and women in Plymouth, The University of the Third Age, and young people from schools nationwide. Letters will be published to the website as they arrive, and throughout the 37 days leading up to the declaration of War on 4 August. 1418NOW.org.uk
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Poetry
A letter to an unknown soldier by Andrew Motion
PhotogrAPhy by hester Cant
With most of us asking the same questions, among them: did you receive this letter today or weeks or even months ago and produce it now to refresh your memory of what it says; is it a love letter, a letter from home, or lines from a friend you are happy to know is alive; who knitted that scarf untied round your neck, the only piece of non-regulation kit and a clue; is that a smile on your face or is it just the way your mouth curves when it is settled in repose; is it possible you never in fact received the letter but composed it and now are reading it through one last time before dropping it in the postbag; if so, is it a love letter, a letter from home, or lines to a friend who will be happy to know you alive; yes with most of us asking these same questions we forget to think this might not be a letter at all but a list of questions you have prepared for us, among them: what makes it possible to end now our conjectures and leave perfectly free and easy, heading into town or out to Oxford and the West, with it making no difference to anything apparently whether we notice you watching us or fail to notice.
Sir Andrew Motion, FRSL (born 26 October 1952) is an English poet, novelist, and biographer, who was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2009. During the period of his laureateship, Motion founded the Poetry Archive, an online resource of poems and audio recordings of poets reading their own work. In 2012, Sir Andrew became President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, taking over from Bill Bryson.
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From our Art Editor
T
his year, art tutors in London prisons have been asked to submit students’ work for an exhibition called “The Inner Self: Drawings from the Subconscious”. This has been arranged by Outside In, an organisation set up by Pallant House Gallery to provide a platform for artists who find it difficult to access the art world, either because of mental health issues, disability, health, social circumstance or because their work does not conform to what is conventionally considered as ‘art’. Outside In do this by providing exhibition opportunities, support and advice. Almost 2,000 artists have been able to create an online gallery on their website, with more than 6,000 people visiting the site each month. They also run Step Up, a training and development programme designed to support those facing barriers to the art world. There are two threads to the programme: Interpreting Collections, which provides participants with the skills to research and interpret works of art, and Workshop Leaders, which develops skills relating to facilitating and leading workshops. Our arts reviewers Eve MacDougal and Lucy Edkins will report on both exhibitions later this year. 26-year-old Ukrainian artist Wlodzimierz Umaniec, also known as Vladimir Umanets, has recently been released from HMP Maidstone, where he served 18 months of a two-year sentence for criminal damage. He had been sentenced for writing his name, along with the phrase “a potential piece of yellowism” on a large painting in London’s Tate Modern gallery in October 2012. His aim was to draw attention to the Yellowism art movement which he co-founded. By coincidence, it then took gallery conservators 18 months to repair damage to the £5 million painting “Black on Maroon” by American abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, which went back on display shortly after Umaniec was released. Umaniec has written recently: “I was wrong to deface the work of a fellow artist,
Black on Maroon by american absract expressionist Mark rothko
The Arts of the Unfree, unpacked and restored By Matthew Meadows more poignantly a piece by Rothko, whose work and ethos I greatly admire. Secondly, my actions were wrong because they served not only to heap ridicule upon myself, but also to turn the public against Yellowism... I am very glad that the restoration project has finished, and visitors can enjoy Rothko’s masterpiece again.” What does this all mean? We hope to talk to Wlodzimierz in our next issue, and learn more about Yellowism... Works of art are attacked regularly, usually with religious or political motives. In our spring issue, our art reviewer Lucy Edkins wrote about suffragette artist Sylvia Pankhurst; in 1914, just before the outbreak of the First World War, her fellow suffragette Mary Richardson famously slashed Velazquez’s “Rokeby Venus” at The National Gallery and was imprisoned
in HMP Holloway. But artists have also defaced other artists’ work for artistic reasons: most recently, art world ‘bad boys’ the Chapman Brothers bought a set of Francisco Goya etchings and ‘altered’ them. These iconoclastic images were later made into a wallpaper design. New issues of Not Shut Up are now launched together with the Freeflow Arts exhibition programme at Garden Court Chambers in London (to whom we are forever indebted). This issue will first appear at the opening of Made Corrections’ show of photographs of inmates at Kaunas Young Offenders Institution – do enjoy our interview with Dean Stalham, one of the Made Corrections team, on the following page.
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Not Shut Up Academy
“If nothing else, art saves lives.” Dean Stalham: featured artist interview
“The work that Dean Stalham does is invaluable – he brings to animating the artistic impulses of society’s dispossessed and downtrodden, offering them a rare sympathy. He believes passionately in art saving lives, always making good on his promises. His projects in visual arts, performance and education give people who have lost their way back their dignity, enabling them to move forward. I urge you to seriously consider all he has to say.’’ Will Self, novelist and journalist
NOT SHUT
UP
Issue 25 Summer 2014
£3.50
Distributed FREE OF CHARGE to secure establishments and care teams around the UK
NOT SHUT UP: Your work has been featured
in NSUP before, including your wonderful picture of Amy Winehouse, (cover of issue 9)... what you been up to since then? DEAN STALHAM: I produced the Amy 10 YEARS Winehouse in collaboration with the OF ART & WRITING renowned former prisoner artist Peter BY THE UNFREE Cameron just after I got out of prison, while I was working at the Koestler, and the reason NSUP wanted to interview me then was because I had a play on at the same time, six months after release. One of your trustees, Simon Miles, directed it for me. I took a course run by the Royal Court Theatre and had four scenes from a play performed and staged in Wandsworth prison, so when I got out, I let them know I was out and to carry on what I was doing. Which was a shock to many people, including my missus, who was a former Page 3 girl, lived in a £500,000 house, and when I said “I’m gonna be an artist and a writer when I get out,” she laughed in my face and said, “You’re a gangster from Cricklewood, forget it! They’ll never let you in.” DEAN STALHAM MADE CORRECTIONS CHRIS WILSON BOOKS UNBOUND JONATHAN ROBINSON A MAN STANDING
Subsequently, the relationship broke down, because I was determined to carry on and to be true to my word. Simon Miles said to me “It’s going to take you seven years to achieve any kind of real success”. I said “No way, I’m going do it much quicker than that!”, but you know what? He was spot on. It’s only just now that it’s coming together, that I’m writing for big film companies, and doing more serious, international projects.
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NSUP: How important is that world “resilience” to the creative process? Is it enough just to be a talented artist to be recognised? DS: God, no! As I say, you have to believe and also be good at bloody hard work, no two ways about it. I had the opportunity of working at the Koestler, they gave me space to work on my own stuff, then I got a job building, designing and installing an art installation at Chelsea Flower Show in 2008, a work of poetry emblazoned across reclaimed timber columns to do with homelessness and offending issues. That’s where the idea for my arts organisation, Art Saves Lives, came from. It was the last line of the poem that I wrote on WWW.NOTSHUTUP.CO.UK 25
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Not Shut Up Academy
the columns which were part of the show: “If nothing else, art saves lives.”
nsup: So when did you set up Art Saves Lives and what was its mission? Ds: We had amazing events and exhibitions, eight of them in our first year, featuring 40 artists, all former prisoners. In our first year, we put on ten plays, done by former prisoners. I wasn’t given access to go into prisons, for security reasons, so it had to be those on the out. The first year was phenomenal, so was the second, and down the five years it started waning, because we weren’t actually saving any lives, because we still had the same artists and the same writers on board, none of them actually progressing into careers in the arts. Hence, with Made Corrections, we want to be more professional, less idealistic about getting stuff done. It’s a double edged sword, using your criminal past to get your foot in the door, because what I found is that you get invited to come up to the door, but you very rarely get asked to come in. nsup: So you shut down Art Saves Lives recently and launched Made Corrections in its place, tell us about it. Ds: The first exhibition I worked on for the Koestler was at the ICA in 2007, and I met a guy there called David Ellis, he was very interested in the art that year, and the work that was chosen was chosen by youth offenders. Five years later, David Ellis had all these contacts in Lithuania, and he wanted me to come over there to actually see the state of its prisons, compared to ours. I was allowed into a young offender interrogation facility. I don’t think they realised who they were letting in, they were just like “We’ve got a visitor!” and all the coffee and the biscuits came out. When I finally got to their art classrooms, they just had four cups with crayons in them, no evidence of any art at all. 13-18 year old kids, the governor very accommodating, showing us the bull whip they used to use.
Now, that shows you can make art out of anything. Art buyers were fighting over it, and someone paid £850 for that toilet roll. Because it became ‘art’. And with the permission of the artist, on many occasions when addressing people who say they can’t draw, they can’t write, I give them a toilet roll each and say “Write out a Want List”. Make your own artwork out of this. You don’t have to be trained, you don’t have to be given permission, it’s about being engaged. And seeing art everywhere...
nsup: But you’ve succeeded in getting the photographers in there, and support from JR, one of the world’s most famous street artists. What’s the aim of the project? Ds: When I went back to Lithuania two years later, the art room was exactly the same. Some of the inmates said “I remember you from the last time I was in here,” so we ended up with 39 portraits out of 180 boys. JR normally has a van like a big camera, where the public takes a picture of themselves, and the protest concept is in the size of the images he produces, massive, all over the walls and floors of buildings – so now we have 39 big photos of young offenders which we pasted all over their jail, to show that prisoners are also willing to participate in public art projects. Most have never had their pictures taken before!
nsup: Wow! No excuses then for not writing! Although I hear even toilet rolls are in short supply in prisons today. What are you working on now yourself as an artist? Ds: For a good few years, my confidence was shot because of the constant rejection of my written work. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t seem to find a way in. Since joining the NSUP Academy, I have renewed vigour and energy for writing. I have scripted two feature films, got a new full length play in development, the first I have written that covers serious prison issues, one I hope will ‘bring the house down’! I am also writing a book about my life. Time to put things straight. I’m sick of being known as the man that stole six million quid’s worth of Warhol and Dali!
nsup: So they got what the art concept was about? Ds: One of the most successful works of art in a Koestler show I
curated was a roll of toilet paper with a wish-list written on it.
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not
Gallery
shut
up
Images of young offenders by Donatas StankeviÄ?ius, being shown at Freeflow Arts summer exhibition, Garden Court Chambers, London
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Not Shut Up Academy
THE REDSKIN By Chris Wilson
H
e came out of the desert after spending five days buried up to his head in the red Mojave dust, kicking heroin with an old Apache curando who sat by him the whole time lifting a flask of water to his dry lips every now and then, feeding him crickets that just appeared in his hand while he sang songs about the grandfathers and how it was to be a man. When he climbed out of the hole, he thought he didn’t know much about anything anymore and that was good. All the things he knew before just kept him drunk or in prison. The only thing he did know was that some day he would have to find his children and tell them something important. He wasn’t sure what it was yet, but when the time came, it would be there. He set up camp in the hills above Lake Cachuma to wait for a sign that would tell him which way he should go. While he was waiting each morning, he walked down to the water and stood on the rocks with a spear he’d made out of a sapling that he’d sharpened with a buck knife and he raised his arm and stood still and the fish came to him and he speared them and when he had enough fish he walked back up to his camp site and smoked them over his fire. When the marshals came down and arrested him for trespassing and poaching, he sat in the back of the four wheel drive and looked out at the mountains through the metal grate on the back window and tried to put himself inside the body of a hawk that was following them in the sky, down the fire track road and onto the interstate, but he couldn’t do it, not really, it was like he was still pretending. After they let him out of jail with a promise to appear in 30 days for his court date, he thought maybe he should just get drunk and forget about everything, but he didn’t. Instead, he went to the probation office like they told him to and the probation officer was
SileSia by Chris Wilson, oil on canvas
a young woman with copper hair and true eyes and she drove him down to a homeless shelter in Oxnard in her car and gave him her card with her home number written on the back in pencil and she asked him what he was aiming to do and he said just stay out of trouble and she had smiled and patted him on the shoulder and said call me tomorrow. All night long he sat up on his cot listening to the sound of men snoring and swearing in their sleep and when the sun came up he walked out the back door and headed to the beach. He sat on the shore line looking out over the ocean and when the white kids came down with their surf boards and paddled out into the waves then turned around and caught the swells heading to the rocks and stood up on their boards with their arms stretched out and flying, he found that he was enjoying it as much as if he had been out in the waters himself. Mexico, he said out loud, I’m going to Mexico, then stood up smiling and started walking due south down the morning sand.
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Books Behind Bars
Books Unlocked: The Sisters Brothers
R
The National Literacy Trust is a national charity dedicated to raising literacy levels in the UK. They work to improve the reading, writing, speaking and listening skills in the UK’s most disadvantaged communities, where up to 40 per cent of people have literacy problems.
ecent statistics show that literacy is a significant issue in prisons: 60% of prisoners have difficulties with basic literacy skills; half the male prison population was excluded from school and 20-30% of the prison population has learning difficulties. In 2013, in an attempt to support prisoners and young offenders to become avid readers, Books Unlocked, a reading initiative targeting prison library reading groups across England and Wales, was launched. The project is delivered thanks to funding from the Booker Prize Foundation, which is building on its history of celebrating the best in contemporary literature by increasing disadvantaged communities’ access to highquality writing. Books Unlocked recently invited bestselling author of western saga The Sisters Brothers into HMP Ryehill to meet his readers and get them inspired to not only feedback on the book, but also write themselves.
An Audience with Patrick De Witt at HMP Ryehill, April 2014 Maidy, Creative Writing Tutor I watched as Patrick De Witt, sitting with a semi-circle of guys around him, fielded
questions concerning his best selling novel. He was leaning back in his chair, his long legs stretched out to show his sharp shooting cowboy boots. His father had given him books to read when he was young and one of his favourite authors was J.P Donlevy. He liked the humour and the weird stuff. The Sisters Brothers wrote itself, he declared. He did not sit down to write a Western, that just happened. “Go with what feels right,” he advised them. In the semi-circle were 13 students, most of them had attended creative writing classes, or were on the waiting list. All of them had written something at some point. Several were award winners from such competitions as Koestler. They had been excited when told of the visit, and most had managed to read Patrick’s book in a week, then pass it on so others might also enjoy it. Patrick admitted that his first novel had been semi-autobiographical, and he told how some people had recognised themselves in it. The historical nature of The Sisters Brothers had allowed him to be removed from the characters. By the age of 15, Patrick knew he was going to write novels. And then he spoke about his experience of being a writer. He reckoned it had taken him 10 years to learn his craft, and is a different kind of writer at different times of day. Sleep is important, as it “refills the well”. More advice he imparted included “Less is more”,
“Never be a phoney”, “Read as much as you can”, all the advice I want my own creative writing students to take on board! At the end of the (far too short) session, Patrick read from his book. It was good to hear it read in his soft American drawl: “Here lies Morris, a good man and friend. He enjoyed the finer points of civilized life but never shied away from a hearty adventure or hard work. He died a free man, which is more than most people can say, if we are going to be honest about it. Most people are chained to their own fear and stupidity and haven’t the sense to level a cold eye at just what is wrong with their lives. Most people will continue on, dissatisfied but never attempting to understand why, or how they might change things for the better, and they die with nothing in their hearts but dirt and old, thin blood - weak blood, diluted - and their memories aren’t worth a goddamned thing.” Throughout the visit, Patrick was courteous and humble, and we are all looking forward to both the film adaptation of this book, and his next novel. The attendees were afterwards asked to write something that had been inspired by the visit.
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Patrick De Witt
An Audience with Patrick De Witt
The Author’s Visit The Sisters Brothers was a book Which then became a hit. The Author came to see our jail, his name Patrick De Witt. A circle of inmates gathered round to ask about the book: Who were his heroes? What inspires him? Whose advice he took?
Having read the short-listed Man Booker Prize novel, The Sisters Brothers, it was nice to talk to the author in person. Patrick spoke about his early life with his brother, not seeing much of his dad, having to work long hours and when he did, it was normally while reading a book. Patrick was intrigued by this and it seemed that is was the beginning of his love of books. He left home early and he moved to LA from Canada, where he worked in a bar where his first book was based. It was about him and his friends. He also spoke about a small book he wrote which his brother published and went around trying to sell himself. It took them two years to get rid of all the books. He remarked that it was a great achievement, as it showed him that he could write. He also spoke about the endless rejections he got from publishers and how he almost longed for the rejections, how strange that was. This book, The Sisters Brothers, is set in 1850, and is about two brothers who were contract killers. The relationship between these two characters is what drives the book, not taking away from the cool, smooth way in which the story flows, and the rich mix of characters. I can only say that he has a style which is unique. I am now a fan, and hope that he can carry on with his good work. Michael, HMP Ryehill
A normal guy with a passion for words, and a desire to tell good tales, said we should write, and persevere, and not be afraid to fail. I enjoyed his visit, tho’ I’d not read the book, it made me write this rhyme. And when I can I’ll take a look cos reading beats hard time. Steven, HMP Ryehill
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Fiction
ApocAlypse in Rock port by Craig Roy, HMYOI Polmont
It is time for Captain America to save the world... if only he can save himself from himself. “There is no sin except stupidity.” Oscar Wilde
It was Halloween within the sleepy town of Rock Port, only a matter of hours before I’d be attending the party of the year. The Apocalypse Party. The only time Rock Port came alive. I had wanted to attend since I’d been nine years old, something I remembered very clearly, as it had been the year my brother Dean had stopped taking me trick or treating. With Dean, we’d been Scooby and Shaggy, but when Dean had started partying with adults, I became Scooby and Mom (somehow, it didn’t have the same ring to it). From that moment, I hated the Apocalypse Party. Hated until now. Turning eighteen, I was finally old enough to attend and see for myself what all this armageddon fuss was all about. My friends had suggested the classic costume clichés, such as vampires and werewolves, and I was mortified when someone suggested dressing up as a zombie – I was terrified of zombies, having overdosed on old B-movies in the past, so that was out of the question. I finally decided to go as Captain America. The party started at 8pm in the local graveyard. I arrived with Pikachu, a knight in shining armour and a slutty cat, otherwise known as Gary, Daniel and Amy – my best friends. I was beginning to see Amy in a new light (considering her black lace pussycat underwear). The cemetery was a sea of all shapes and colors, a cacophony of yelling and laughing becoming ever louder with each step; it was like crossing over into a whole new adult, though still cartoonish, realm. We were greeted by Gareth, dressed as the Devil, “Welcome to the End of the World!” I had known Gareth since he had befriended my brother in middle school. Gareth’s dad was actually the one who had created the Apocalypse Party and since then it had become an underground town tradition. “Captain America, eh?” enquired the Devil.
“Thought I would try and stop the Apocalypse, save a few of you ghouls and goblins.” “You can try, but it’s pretty hard to stop the end of the world,” he laughed. With a couple of ‘catch you afters’, we ventured deeper into the graveyard. Looking into the crowd, I was happy to see that I was the only Captain to attend, besides Captain Sparrow that is. I found myself setting my sights on Superwoman, or rather our head cheerleader Ashley, who I’d had a crush on since third grade. Other than a few exchanges in Calculus, we hardly knew each other. I didn’t think myself too bad, being slim and toned and, thanks to the costume, giving off the illusion of the perfect six pack. Slipping past Frankenstein and numerous vampires, I realised half-way through the obstacle course that I was racing Iron Man towards my prize. Accidentally, I ‘bumped’ into Ugly Betty and sent her flying into the competition, apologising profusely without pausing for a second to help her up. “Err... Hi, Superwoman... How are you? Or should I say Ashley. Great costume by the way... Err...” “Thanks. Sorry, but who are you?” Pulling off my mask, I mumbled, “Oh, yeah, it’s me, Travis... from Calculus.” “Travis! Hi! I didn’t recognize you. How are you?” “Yeah, great, just... taking a break from saving the world... seeing as it’s ending after all...” I could have died of embarrassment at that point, but Ashley didn’t seem fazed. “Ha, good one... so, Gareth’s really pulled it off...” “The Devil look suits him, don’t you think? So... can I get you a drink?” I had no chance. “Eh, yeah, sure, why the hell not. The world ends tonight, this might be the only chance we get.”
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“Gareth!” “Travis! Enjoying yourself?” “Of course! Dude, this party is awesome!” I exclaimed. “Didn’t I see you talking to Ashley earlier?” “Yeah... Did you see Iron Man talking to her too? That’s Josh under that stupid costume.” Joshua Day... I had no chance. He was captain of the football team, and at the end of the day captain of the football team trumps any old superhero. “Nah, Iron Man fucked up. He ended up getting off with her older sister, Jennifer. Kudos to him, she’s good in the sack, or so I’m told, but yeah, basically he’s blown it with Superwoman. She hates her sister.” “Is there any girl here Ashley hasn’t turned against her? All the tequila in the world couldn’t make me go back over there now.” “What about LSD?” Gareth enquired. His costume gave his grin a glowing tinge to it, turning it more into a threat than a smile as he whipped out a bag of white tablets. “LSD? Is that safe?” “Of course it is! Wouldn’t be offering it to you if it wasn’t. It’ll give you that boost you need to make a pass on Ashley again. Or is Captain America scared of Superwoman and some silly little pills?”
Daniel RaDcliffe by Jason Whitley, HMP cardiff
The bar was covered in vast amounts of bottles from green unknown liquids to beer to... just what I was looking for: vodka. I poured a shot on the rocks for myself and one for Ashley, but turning around I bumped into Amy. “Heyyy...” “Who’s that for?” “Ashley. You know, the –” “– Head cheerleader. Yeah, I know who she is. And she’s talking to you? No offence, it’s just hard to imagine her walking amongst us, never mind talking to anyone at the bottom of the food chain. I don’t know why you bother. Oh, maybe she’s a succubus!” “What’s that?” “A female demon. Rapes little boys while they sleep in their little beds at night.” Amy didn’t like Ashley; they used to be good friends before I had met Amy, but on one knew why they fell out. “Well, she can eat me all she likes,’’ I retorted. “I bet you’d like that. Looks like you may have missed out though; she’s feasting on Iron Man as we speak.” Amy was right. I was surprised Ashley wasn’t choking on the guy’s tongue. I handed the second vodka to Amy and we both downed it. A toast to dead dreams. Half way through the party, I encountered the Devil again.
Half an hour later, convinced nothing was going to happen, it hit me; my first ever wave of chemical ecstasy. I felt brilliant. Brilliant was an understatement. So, again, I set my eyes on Ashley and, resuming my previous mission, gathered a couple of vodka on the rocks. She was sitting on top of a gravestone, a small Victorian cherub crying tears of green moss over her. It almost looked life-like. I could see Ashley was still upset by Iron Man’s betrayal, and approaching her I was 100% sure I’d seen her give me a smile. Yes, she was, she was smiling. She looked more beautiful than she had earlier. Without her mask you could see her brown hair shimmering like silk in the light of the full moon. It complimented her emerald eyes. “Hi,” I said. “Looks like you might need one of these.” I handed over the vodka. “What happened to you earlier? You vanished. Not nice, Captain America.” “Sorry about that, I got distracted by the Devil himself.” “Don’t blame you. It’s a pretty wild party. I’ve been looking forward to it for years.” “So have I! I remember when my brother came back from his first, he was wasted!” “You should have seen my sister.” You could hear the disdain in her voice at the word ‘sister’. “She had her head down for the toilet for days! But don’t tell her I told you that.” We both laughed. “You look good too by the way,” she added. “Thanks. I was thinking, if you wanted, maybe we would go somewhere else... Somewhere... more private?” I couldn’t believe I had just said that. She pulled herself off of the gravestone and downed her vodka, pulling me into her. Before I knew it I had her tongue down my throat with her hand reaching for my crotch.
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Fiction
Letting go of the back of my neck, she simply said, “Where to, Cap’n?” Behind the crypt, the noise of the party had become no more than a whisper of background music. Holding her wrists, I thrust Ashley against the back wall, kissing down her neck when she blurted out: “Hey, you! Piss off!” Confused, I turned round to see a couple of folk in amongst the trees. I was about to continue where I left off, but Ashley asked me to make them go away. Cursing under my breath, I headed over to the trees where the characters were still loitering. Mid-way, I began to stagger, trying to shake off the ill feeling in my head. I pushed on into the bushes, and the characters began to become clearer. I froze. Zombies. The most realistic zombies I had ever seen. Panicking, I retreated over to the crypt where I didn’t find Ashley, but did instead see a large and rather hungry looking panther. Thinking it had eaten Ashley was now coming for me, I ran back towards the party, stumbling over the headstones, flying right into the middle of the crowd. Captain America wasn’t ever able to fly, I thought to myself, just before everything went dark. I opened my eyes to find Pikachu staring at me... I wanted it to be Gary, but it wasn’t, it was a giant Pikachu. It spoke, but all I heard was “Pika, pika, pikaaaachu!” The world had gone mad. I staggered up from the ground, trying to hold steady, to breathe the insanity away. But nothing was working. I looked up to the revellers, coming across all sorts of faces, vampires with blood dripping from their fangs, people’s faces melting into the ground. I turned round and came across the same zombies from earlier. I screamed, or at least I thought I screamed. Running again, I bumped into a fairy. She was blindingly beautiful; her wings contained so many colors, from indigo to magnolia to crimson to colors I had never seen before. They were so bright they were hurting my eyes. I was convinced I was going to lose my sight. There was something magical about them, and about her, which momentarily calmed me down, distracting me from the mayhem. “Are you okay?” her voice sounded of velvet. “What?” “I said, are you okay?” “Yeah, no, wait... Have you seen any zombies around?” “I didn’t know Captain America was scared of the undead,” she joked. “Amy! And Ashley! We have to find them both, before the zombies get them!” The fairy’s name was Evelyn. She asked me to describe the girls we were looking for to save. “She’s... she’s... oh, she’s a slutty cat! And a Superwoman!” I quickly recruited a vampire who said he was a vegetarian. I trusted him, oddly enough, besides he knew the fairy and why would a fairy trust a vampire? Unless, of course, they were lovers and she wanted to feed her man... doubt started to creep up on me. I bumped into Superman and asked him to join our quest, but he declined.
The headache began getting worse, the noises around me louder, my heart not missing Ashley or my friends any more, just hungry for calm. I thought I was having a seizure. The ground began shaking and then rip apart, groans coming from deep down within the depths of hell. It was then that I saw the Devil coming towards me. “Captain Ameri-” “You did this!” “What?” “You tempted me, you brought the dead back to life! Why?!” “Travis... what the hell are you talking about?” “Don’t lie!” I pushed him to the ground and began to punch the fuck out of his face, but I felt like I was burning up, like I was on fire. It was then the Devil exploded into flames. He threw himself up into the air, becoming eight feet tall, morphing into a demonic giant, piercing me with absolutely black eyes. Silence descended across the graveyard and the ground stopped shaking. I noticed that all the monsters’ eyes were all on me. I had to get out of here. So, with my extensive knowledge of horror movies, I grabbed the first thing that resembled a stake which fell to hand. This turned out to be a broken bottle. I lunged for the nearest baddie, stabbing him in the chest. The desired effect was instant. The monsters began to scatter. An orgy of chaos. The vampire burst into a pile of ashes. I moved onto a werewolf, who tried to fight back, but then whimpered away into the other direction as I cut his arm. I turned to find my arch nemesis: Iron Man. Even with his advanced technology, I knew I could take him. I lunged at his armour, wondering if my makeshift stake would penetrate. Disarming my attempts to kill him, he threw me against a nearby headstone, head first. This round goes to you, Iron Man! Lying there, temporarily vanquished, I looked across the grass to see the vampire I had stabbed earlier was not quite yet dead and not really a vampire either. It was my friend Daniel, his arms wrapped round himself, his cardboard armour dripping blood, his empty eyes staring coldly at me. I saw Amy appear, her tears streaking her make up. I could see the look of terror in her eyes as she turned away. I wanted to call out. I wanted to say sorry, but the words didn’t come. Half of the people were crying, but the rest remained monsters, their features becoming more and more warped. What was real? What wasn’t? It didn’t seem to matter. The zombies reappeared, but this time in far greater number. I closed my eyes, wondering what it would feel like to have my flesh ripped from me, just hoping it would be quick. The Devil had been right... this was the end of the world. Dedicated to Travis Johnston (1994 – 2012, drug overdose)
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11/06/2014 22:10
The Prison Librarian
Review: a Book
U
sually, reviews focus on a specific title (see our Sisters Brothers page earlier), telling us about the plot, the positives, the negatives, and at the end – should we buy it... well this review is a little different. As a prison librarian, my life is devoted to pushing books on people. Specific books they might not want to read, or books full stop. I bend over backwards to try to get staff to use our facilities (yes, they can borrow too), organise events, reading groups, reorder stolen or damaged books, make officers bring prisoners down as often as they can. But what is this ‘thing’ we are serving up? Have you ever contemplated the book in itself? I believe it is the most miraculous invention in human history. In the history of the universe. Just think about it: someone sits and decides they will convert all those amazing, non-physical phenomena called ‘thoughts’ into words. For this purpose they use this thing called the ‘alphabet’ – a bunch of wee pictures, each one representing a sound. Those pictures of sounds are then transcribed millions of times into words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, then printed onto dried wood pulp. A true act of creation / creativity. Not only that, but the reader then uses their eyes to scan the light bouncing off that page, picks out all those millions of symbols, and inside their brain converts them into their own thoughts and
feelings. And all for the price of a packet of fags... Books are incredible things, but we have been taught to see them as ordinary, disposable objects. Where would we be without them? Would oral storytelling be able to manage the incredible histories contained in our libraries? Would we be able to learn about other nations and continents without books in translation? Would millions of women and men imprisoned around the world be able to taste freedom and open the windows of their imaginations, while locked away out of the gaze of society, without that odd tatty
paperback or third-hand hardback? Love books. And if you don’t, learn to love them. A book can never make you think something you don’t want to. A book can be stopped and swapped for another any time you like (as long as you have access to a library). A book can teach, entertain, inspire, make you laugh or cry. What other non-human thing in the universe can make you do all that? Love books. They are our most humble servants.
NEWS FLASH
Books can actually get you out of prison! Have you heard about the Brazilian “redemption through reading” scheme, in which prisoners in four of the country’s toughest jails get four days off their sentence for each classic work of literature, philosophy or science they read? Sao Paulo lawyer Andre Kehdi, who heads a book donation project for prisons, said: “This way a person can leave prison more enlightened and with an enlarged vision of the world.” Or the Italian region of Calabria, where the local govt has recently approved a bill to reduce jail time of three days for each book finished? Calabria’s culture representative, Mario Caligiuri, said: “Reading is an extraordinary antidote to unhappiness.” Reading is work. It forces you to concentrate, think, draw conclusions. But what glorious work – for each day you spend reading, you get that day of inner freedom in itself – imagine that day was then converted into a day of actual extra release? Now imagine, just for a second, that such a scheme was tried in one of our prisons. Are there any Governors out there willing to champion such a move? Managers, officers, tutors, therapists – write in to us, we want your voices on our pages too!
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Not Shut Up Academy
A Man Standing Luk Vervaet is a teacher of Dutch at Saint-Gilles prison (Brussels) and life-long prison activist. Last year, he introduced Not Shut Up to the work of Jean-Marc Mahy, a Belgian ex-unfree writer and actor whose play “A Man Standing” has now been translated into English. Here, he interviews Jean-Marc about his life and mission to bring his play to English audiences.
LUK VERVAET How can a human being survive solitary
confinement? Or even describe it? This is what makes the testimony of former prisoner Jean-Marc Mahy particularly unique. He was just 19 years old when, in 1987, he was confined to solitary for 36 months and told: “If you try to take to the walls, you will be shot. Your death certificate is signed.” But Jean-Marc survived the full term of his sentence. Not only that, but he went on to create a one-man performance called “A Man Standing”, based on the horrors he experienced in solitary confinement. In it, he himself acts, without any mask, taking us into the silent tomb where he was held for 1,100 days. On tour since 2010, across Belgium and France, “A Man Standing” has been performed 200 times, each performance a fullcapacity sell-out. A version of the play, subtitled in Dutch, has been performed in the city of Mechelen, for audiences which included 1,500 students in Charleroi, and most recently in Le Mans. During his tour, Jean-Marc has received more than 6,000 letters from young people, describing their reactions and perceptions on seeing the play. A year ago, with the permission of his probation officer, Jean-Marc Mahy came to London to start looking for theatre companies that might be willing to produce “A Man Standing”.
LUK VERVAET: You start your play saying “Good evening, my
name is Jean-Marc Mahy. I’m not an actor, but I invite you to revisit a part of my past life with me”. And you end the play with the phrase: “Out of respect for my victims and for those who were dragged into my story against their will, I won’t come back to bow”. Can you tell us what happened?
JEAN-MARC MAHY: Until the age of 17, I lived in Brussels. As a young
kid, I became part of a group of young offenders. Family bonds, love... I found them on the streets. At 17, on my own free will, I went to a juvenile court at the court house in Brussels to seek some help. They put me in a cell for 24 hours. In the morning, the judge saw me for 5 minutes. He showed me the huge amount of files on his desk, told me he was busy with juvenile offenders, not with children in danger. One evening, on November 24, 1984, two friends invited me to join them to commit a burglary. The old man wasn’t supposed to be at home. But he was. He wanted to call the police, so I panicked and knocked him out. There was no trace of blood. Then I read in the press that the old man had died in hospital. Eventually, along with the other lads, I was arrested. My court case was set to start six months later, when I turned 18. The juvenile court declined jurisdiction of the case and I was delivered up to adult justice. On 31 May 1985, I was transferred from the
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Interview
lV: Why did the prison authorities put you in isolation? Jmm: For those put in the isolation block, it was as if the authorities had concluded that normal prison for them was useless. The only thing that was left for them was self-destruction. Everything was done to dehumanize and destroy you. For Tony, my accomplice, who was also there, they succeeded. He, who could neither read or write, literally became crazy after 14 months. I’ve seen people who were incapable of speaking after just a few months under these conditions. Nine out of ten placed in isolation are going to go crazy or die there. In the play, I talk about Victor, a fellow prisoner, who cut his tongue out in this dungeon. I too came close to death, as I show in the play.
lV: You show us how your life took another turn after your failed suicide attempt... Jmm: A few days after my suicide attempt, I was allowed to read
the newspapers. I read that on the night of my failed attempt, five people had successfully committed suicide. I became convinced that a miracle had happened to me. I decided that from then on I should live. When I first entered the isolation block, I had read this sentence on a sign they had on display: “You enter here a lion, but leave a lamb.” In the end, I came out a man standing.
lV: How did you come to the idea to make a play? Jmm: I was released on parole on 16th of September 2003. One youth centre to the prison in Nivelles. There, I made a first suicide attempt. I lost a litre of blood, before I was saved by prison guards. A year later, in April 1986, I was transferred to the prison of Forest, because they had suspicions that I wanted to escape. At Forest, I was plied with drugs from morning to night by a psychiatrist called the Indian. On 21st of November 1986, I was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment. The two others to 10 and 12 years. I decided to find a way to escape from prison. With another friend, I needed to find a third person to come with us. This third man was older than us and, so I learned afterwards, an alcoholic capable of drinking sixty beers a day. And very violent with it. We escaped in April ‘97, taking a prison officer as our hostage. Once outside, we stopped a car, threw the driver out, left the hostage behind and fled. Across the border, two policemen recognized us. Instead of calling for reinforcements, they wanted to do arrest us themselves. Our third man, who used to rebel against the police when he was drunk, grabbed his knife and threw himself on one of the policemen. If this hadn’t happened, we would simply have been arrested. The third man yelled at me to take the weapon of the other policeman. I had never used a gun or shot someone, but this time it only took a second of not thinking... The policeman died from his injuries. We were arrested ten minutes later and on 19th of December 1988, I was sentenced to life imprisonment.
of the nicest jobs I’ve done since were being a tour guide in the former prison museum in Tongeren - I was made for this. It was my mission. In three years, the prison museum had welcomed close to 300,000 people. These people saw what was a prison. They saw behind the scenes. They saw that prisons are not the five-star hotels often described in the media, but then the government decided to close the museum and transform it into a new youth prison! I told myself that if I could no longer show young people what a prison was then I would invite them to come to my ‘cell’. That’s how I decided to write my play. Initially, it was not going to be me who acted in “A Man Standing”. But I didn’t want anyone else to play it. We planned to run ten performances, that’s all. Today, we already have more than 200 behind us. And now the play has been translated into English, I hope to share its message with audiences around the world. Solitary confinement is still used in many places, including America. My mission now is to make all that stop. A Man Standing will be performed at RichMix Centre in London in November of this year. If you would like to hear more about this play or contact the producers, write to us at Not Shut Up and we will pass on your message to Luk and Jean-Marc.
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Poetry
Now As now is small so big am I my hands the sky my feet the ground As now is deep so shallow am I my ears the wind my fingers all sound As now is mortal forever am I I was never born I shall never die Baruch Ben David, HMP Wandsworth
Unweaving a Rainbow We come and go through muffling mists, build our barriers as if the ego were constantly pissed. Where we err, over and over again, we right every wrong with a bigger bang, nurture every sin. The ‘wish to be loved’ has no lavish religion-free history, paints for us an erotica unexpressed. Naked in the sanctuary of our busy heads, we forget to touch, to turn a tender dream into a fervent truth. As we unweave our rainbow sorry has an unequivocal voice, has a price which may cost our Earth. Paul Lumsden, HMP Greenock
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Interior Room The room where I fell into The room where it felt smaller The room where it was punishing The room that sung to itself The room that breathed The room at my son’s birth The room is where the noisy hoover is The room from the smelly dog The room for my shrieking sisters
She Smiles Upon Us All I’ve never paid death much heed, but lately she calls to me, pouring her sweet honey in my ear, her nectar, seductive with rich alluring tones she calls. Come, just one step, then it’s done. All men come to their end, it’s just a matter of when.
The room where mum got caught The room in where Dad got laid out The room where the secrets are hidden
Anon, HMP Isle of Wight Albany
Christopher Sims, HMP Winchester
Some bloody day release! Who thought these brats would be an hour’s enjoyment Smile Joanne Foutre me Apparently he did, ha bloody ha, yep Judy hit him back NOT Why no release? Panel regrets to inform you, no reduction in risk... Solicitor/solicit: choices; LSC – no pennies, what can a girl do to get some cash? Christ I need a piss Anon, HMP Isle of Wight Albany
Response to piece of art from issue 22
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Interview
Thomas Glover: Love’s Gutter
Thomas Glover is a 22 year old poet and lyricist who currently lives in Swindon. He has been a user of mental health services for the last seven years. Love’s gutter is his first collection.
notshutup: Can you tell us about your first encounter with poetry? Was it by reading, writing or listening? thomas GloveR: My first encounter with poetry was reading it at school, but it wasn’t until I was 15 that fell in love with it and starting writing. It wasn’t a teacher who inspired me, it was more myself finding a common ground and understanding in the written word. The writer that inspired me the most was Charles Bukowski. I just think he says something so raw and true that it’s different to conventional poetry. nsup: Do you think writing can be taught, or at least improved through input from others? Has anyone helped you develop your craft? tG: I think it has to be a natural gift otherwise it’s very synthetic, but it can be improved by those trying to write. My writing has improved since I started, as I’ve matured with my work being more natural. I had two teachers in hospital who aided me with my writing, but that was more with resources and encouragement. My greatest influence has to be Charles Bukowski. nsup: How has your experience of incarceration affected your life and your writing? tG: Well, it has made me appreciate what I have and helped me build up relationships with those important to me. My writing has changed since coming into contact with mental health services,
as I have been able to have more insight into my own condition. And it all comes down to a clear cut choice of whether you want to go on with it and see if things get better or leave it and accept what you think you’re limited to, but I for one am not going to give up on myself now.
nsup: While you were in secure custody, did you see reading or writing touch anyone else’s lives? tG: Well when I was in hospital, I met a few people who wrote lyrics, mostly being rap lyrics like myself, and this was a form of expression for them just like it was for me. I just think I’ve found my niche in life and I’ll continue to sharpen my skills. It’s more about getting my word out there and being heard, rather than profiting from it. nsup: How did you come to decide when the time was right to publish your debut book of poetry? tG: Well, it was suggested that I approach a mental health theatre company, Stepping Out, when I was in my last secure setting and they took it from there. To be honest my emotion regulation wasn’t as mature as it is now and everything just felt comfortable to pursue my talent further. I don’t want to be hindered as to what I can and can’t do just because I have a diagnosis of mental health issues.
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11/06/2014 22:23
Poetry
Being in love Being in love is like blood in your mouth, it is a stray, crippled phoenix once proud, burning in the heart, as a room with nothing but a fire, smothering the occupant in ashes of wolf-hide grey smoke, starving the lungs of oxygen, like that first time gas was used in trench warfare, straight into the snaring embrace of bullets & bayonet lunges, because I’m my own worst enemy when it comes to falling in love.
Jigsaw Love Promises abscond from my lips like troubled teens, my words being all I have in this misery. At first glance, you sway in love’s current, dancing shoes tapping the floor like a child’s nervous twitch. We dance together awhile & sadness does not stay, but waits for us to finish our jigsaw love & the joker gets his throne in the end. In another life, I would chase you, but for now, you dream & decay with me. By Thomas Glover
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11/06/2014 22:23
Art
Some Fine Cell Work by Matthew Meadows
A
big thank you to those who responded to our callout for art work, and here are some excellent examples. Please keep sending it in. If you want a portrait made from that battered photo of your son, daughter, pet or partner, and you’re lucky enough to be on Jason Whitley’s wing at HMP Cardiff, you’d better hurry up – he’s about to be released. Jason has done hundreds of portraits, and he’s had a few of these photocopied and sent to Not Shut Up. We’re all familiar with these portraits of loved ones, enlarged and copied in pencil from a much smaller photo. Ability to depict light, texture of hair and fabric, not forgetting that essential, scaling up accurately: all these skills make for the successful portrait. Harder than these though is how to bring human expressions to life, make that smile feel natural. And all for half an ounce of burn… a bargain! Jason’s work shows just such skill, and I hope he continues to draw when he gets out. I don’t know what his artistic ambitions are, but it’s all about finding your own level, as on release art may well take second place to getting a job and somewhere to live. Perhaps he’ll continue to make similar portraits, and I’m sure there will be no shortage of friends and family queuing up for such skilful work. On the other hand, he might decide to progress his art studies at a local college: these sometimes waive student fees for recently released prisoners. Either way, I hope he finds the space and time to make more art. We received a great biro drawing from
Artwork by Nathan James, HMP Belmarsh
John McKinney, aptly titled “Wired”. He’s created an expressive self-portrait using tangled lines to intensify and concentrate the image – very effective. John is on the segregation unit at HMP Stocken, and enjoyed an interview with artist/exprisoner Lucy Edkins he’d read in an earlier issue. He’ll be pleased to know that Lucy together with artist Eve McDougall (also an ex-prisoner) will be doing a regular roundup of exhibition reviews for Not Shut Up, starting with this issue. Koestler award winner Nathan James in HMP Belmarsh is interested in illustration, particularly children’s books, and has sent
in examples of his distinctive personal style. He would like to progress his work professionally and would appreciate feedback. I like his characters – they’ve got an Anime feel. Finally, Shane from HMP Acklington sent a poignant drawing which accompanied a long poem about great scientists called List of Giants. Shane’s preferred moniker is Innocent Pigeon Man, and his sensitive drawing beautifully illustrates this identity. I’ve passed his poem on to our poetry editor, Anna Robinson.
Are you a cell artist? If you go to an art class in education I’m sure your tutor will have recognised your drawing skill, though you will probably be discouraged from working on your wing portraits on the grounds that they are commercial activity. Fair enough, there’s a course to complete, with a chance to develop your work: subject matter, technique, different media, as your course requires. All useful stuff, and I hope your tutor gives you some creative wriggle room to explore a bit. But as you can see from work illustrated here, you can produce great art in your cell.
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11/06/2014 22:25
Art Round Up
S
hot on discontinued military surveillance film, the large blown-up digital prints of Irish-born Richard Mosse’s exhibition “The Enclave” arrests the eye as you step out onto the top floor of the Photographer’s Gallery in London’s Ramillies Street. Uncovering the hidden in the landscape of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the infra-red light turns the jungle greens into a sea of arterial red, eerily echoing the blood count of 5.4 million who have died in the last sixteen years of warring there. Julien Schnabel’s “Every Angel has its Dark Side” fills the Dairy Arts Centre near Brunswick Square with colour, his huge recent paintings consuming the vast expanse of the old milk factory’s whitewashed walls. “Fifteen Years Old” and “Surrounded by Pigs” and “I Always Thought I’d be Taller” are propped on the floor of one room in their wide gesso frames as though too weighty to hang. As we enter the National Portrait Gallery’s fascinatingly informative “The Great War in Portraits”, commemorating the centenary of the First World War, we are confronted by one man’s journey from a futurist optimism in the growth of modern industry to revulsion and horror at the terrible effects of the devastating new war machines. When Jacob Epstein (1880-1959) created “The Rock Drill” in 1913, it displayed a proud male aggression and power, but by its second showing in 1915 he had dismembered it, leaving an emasculated one-armed torso. The exhibition continues to reveal a collection including some surprisingly fresh renditions of ordinary soldiers and their generals, many made by artists serving as soldiers themselves. German painters Beckman and Kirschner both volunteered and suffered from nervous breakdowns. Ai Wei Wei, held for 81 days in detention with two guards in close proximity at all times, continues to exhibit internationally, even though the Chinese authorities have withheld his passport and, in the streets surrounding his walled compound,
The Artist as Witness: Observation, Metaphor and Introspection Selected gallery visits by Lucy Edkins
paranoid law which compels the drivers to remove their window cranks during festive season for fear someone might throw a leaflet out of the window. Wei Wei films the laborious removal of the screw that holds the crank in, reminding me of a gesture of rebellion during free-flow in HMP Holloway, when a fellow prisoner removed a screw from a window. The window cranks are also remoulded in fine glass here. Finally, in a series of photographs taken remotely using an iPad around the world, he sticks a middle finger up to all the great emblems of authority and national pride.
Photo by tom Powel (2014)
a steadily increasing number of video cameras have been installed to monitors his moves; as each new camera is added, Wei Wei adorns it with a festive red paper lantern. In this exhibition at the Lisson Gallery, in a film of interviews with Beijing taxi drivers we hear about the ridiculously
Lucy Edkins is a multi media artist, writer and filmmaker based in North London. She works with acrylics, print and recycled sculpture installations. She spent some time inside in 1990-91, then began to work in theatre and film production. She is a member of the Inside Film Collective and has trained at the Royal College of Art.
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English PEN Winner
Taste of Metal Anonymous, HMP Glenochil
T
error reaches a plateau, its roaring crests becoming ripples, smoothing to stillness. The sheer dread of the now is a moment stopped in time, for all time. And it never leaves you, a lasting legacy, the gift of fear that keeps on giving. And, of course, there was the taste of metal.
********* Light from the house was scissored away as heavy curtains pulled to behind the old oak door; already, the farewell has faded, the last heat from the fire escaping into the night, the dry prickly cold rushing into the void. It was just so very still. The sharp quiet of the deep winter when all of nature is tucked away under cloudless stars, the ground hard, its glittering diamonds neither crunching nor cracking under the tread of my still-hot soles. Deep in the wood, something slid past the tumbledown birch.
domain in half. He turned from the eaves and made back for the heart of the wood, quickening his pace. Tonight, the scent of death lay heavy among the old trees. The young trees gave way at the fork with the road to the old ferry. The heater was kicking in and the whiteness of breath was thinning. The old Belfast sink, which for all my life had sat behind the fence and watered generations of kye, burst in a moment of brilliance, a reflection from the car’s lamps. I spun the wheel and floored the throttle turning into the bend. Trees closed over the long winding track down to the main road and the Toll Bridge. I killed the lights.
Sure of foot from long experience, he moved between the trees in the near dark. Death lay all around him now and he made for the high ground, safe and deep in the old forest. The burn was behind him as he made past the far bank in silence; birch and ash, oak, beech and fir flew by as he took past the rise where the cattle drank. The taste hung all around him now, a low throb beat with his heart as fear haunted his pace. Sanctuary lay beyond the dyke and the stone river, up into the heartland and the high hill where he was thane. He dug deep and pushed on. It would be a single stride to Across the burn now skimmed with ice, its trickle on the edge of sound, and into the clearing where metal legs ascended to stars and cross the man’s road, the next would be his own. He leapt. the sliver of silver that was the moon. His heart beat faster; not all Ahead, the road lay in darkness, untroubled before me, unseen was right. but there. There was a moment. The shock wave crashed through, arms buckling like plastic, our collective inertia finding its new The romance of the single track among highland beauty is footing. Glass crystallising into many-faceted gems cascaded in; never lost, as ash and oak reach their fingers out from the verge. wheels let go of their ground; something snapped. In from the Tiny lights came out all down the glen, the ribbon of the river only visible in the differing textures of its neighbours, of field and wood. darkness an eye, full of fear, crowned with death; antlers tore through skin and muscle and bone, until the tumbling ceased and The country dodge of extinguishing headlights foretells just how momentum bled away to heat; and the heat escaped into the old alone you are, the lack of interruptions allowing momentum to bring you home, foregoing the slumbering passing places and their trees. Oak and beech, birch, fir and ash. murky clutches. For all time, locked eye to eye, perhaps in wonder as much as in fear, for the eternal journey that lay before us both, the great stag Down in the valley, he could see the lights and the river and the and me. From the cold stars fell only silence. woods. The scent of resin curled through the air, mixing with the rising musk of cattle huddled in their dark byre, but there was And of course there was the taste of metal. something else. A taste like metal recalled the road which cut his I had driven the back road enough times to anticipate the camber of each and every bend, their dips and rises, to know how to speed into corners and let the wheel pull against my grip. If I drove faster than what some man with a clipboard would call safe, then it wasn’t for thrills, but only to make home quicker, to see my own mother’s fire. My hands slid round and round, evading the icy touch of the wheel.
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Not Shut Up Academy
The Roots of Folklore By Cliff Hughes
W
hat is folklore? Something to do with folk-singing? Or sayings your grandmother taught you? We all remember “Red sky at night: shepherds’ delight” and that thirteen is supposed to be unlucky, and I dare say most people will have a vague idea of quaint customs that involve dressing up in silly clothes and dancing. If pushed, they might mention Morris men or children and maypoles, but then would probably get stuck for other examples. Well, it may surprise you, but the customs and practices of folklore are varied and widespread and more popular now than they have been for many years. Folklore is an echo of the old religion and a belief in magic that was common currency in these islands for centuries before Christianity. With a bit of detective work, you can find the old rituals and customs surviving, even in smartphone-obsessed, digital Britain. Christianity’s early success and acceptance by the masses had a lot to with its appropriation of practices, dates, customs and ceremonial gathering places that had in some instances been in use since the Stone Age. The missionaries who came to these shores in the 5th Century bringing the cult of a radical wandering Jew-who-became-god-by-resurrectingafter-his-death, attempted to sweep away the old “devilish” beliefs. But in this they were unsuccessful. So they built their
cathedrals on ancient temple mounds, absorbed the old gods into the saintly canon, then left well alone. Evidence is there to be discovered in today’s celebrations like Hallowe’en and Christmas, in children’s playground games and nursery rhymes, and in rights of passage like weddings and funerals. But folklore is also the driving force behind everyday superstitions and rituals involving the changing seasons, farming and the countryside. Although many of the old beliefs have died out, or are just hazy images in our collective memory, you can find remnants surviving in unlikely places and, believe it or not, on every single day of the year. Folklore is everywhere, and it’s a very serious business. Scratch the surface of Christianity and the old religion shows through. Dig deep enough in any of our well-known annual rituals and you will find the old gods lurking there. And there are many strange happenings in villages and towns up and down the country. Most, of course, are to do with fertility. Until the beginning of the last century (and maybe more recently than that), young unmarried girls and older
Innocent PIgeon Man, by Shane, HMP acklington
childless women would go to the Cerne Abbas Giant on Good Friday (and at midsummer) and leave garlands of flowers on his manhood. If you don’t already know, the giant is a huge figure carved into the chalk of the Dorset hills and he has an appropriately huge erection. A similar figure on the Sussex Downs is known as the Long Man of Wilmington. But his present form is not as he appeared in antiquity or the illustrations in books of the 17th and 18th centuries. He was once as wellendowed as his Dorset cousin and attracted similar attention, until he was cruelly neutered by persons unknown - most probably puritanical church elders (see my poem on page 12 in this issue). Folklore is another word for the roots of our culture. And without roots we all end up lost and at sea – even when behind bars. Are there any aspects of folk tradition or storytelling which fascinate you? Have you drawn or written anything on the subject of old tales or traditions you would like to share with our readers? Inmate, staff or friends and family, please send your work in, we would love to publish it!
Cliff Hughes was born in Sussex in 1956. His family emigrated to New Zealand when he was a baby and he went to school there, returning to England when he was eleven. He got involved with poetry and other forms of writing through Koestler and Not Shut Up, after a spell in prison. Cliff has lived alone in London since 2013, after a thirty year experimental cohabitation with humans finally proved unsuccessful.
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Future Arts
The DigiTal agE by Piers Barber, Online Editor
Living in the digital age: Blogging
Thanks to personal computing, it’s now possible for anyone with an internet connection to start a free personal website, or a ‘blog’. Today, anybody can publish their words, images or videos in an inexpensive, independent and professional manner using platforms such as Wordpress, Tumblr and Blogger. It’s an ideal way to share thoughts and creativity with friends, family and strangers around the world. Some resourceful prisoners have refused to let their difficult circumstances deny them the opportunity to get involved. Shaun Atwood wrote “Jon’s Jail Journal / The Prison Blog Of An Orwellian Unperson” whilst serving time in Arizona, and went on to gather a considerable worldwide following as a result. His books are now bestsellers! Current inmate Adam Mac, meanwhile, is currently “Blogging Behind Bars” on his experiences of British prisons. You can read some of his writing on page 20. For those with an interesting story to tell or opinion to voice, blogging isn’t just a future possibility – it’s the here and now.
Digital libraries – a solution for prisons?
It’s official: e-books are transforming the world of publishing. Accessible through cheap electronic devices such as Kindles and tablets, whole books and magazines can be downloaded in seconds and read at the touch of a button. This form is more portable, environmentally friendly and longer-lasting than ink and paper. Although most of our regular readers do not have access to such devices, e-books could well prove to be more directly relevant to our cause than initially expected. Justice Minister Chris Grayling has stopped inmates receiving parcels, which could contain books, on the basis that it reduces smuggling opportunities. It means prison libraries are more important than ever, although these too are unfortunately finding themselves at the mercy of escalating government cuts. Not Shut Up believes that e-books, e-readers and the growing phenomenon of the digital library offer exciting solutions. We are now gearing up to publish e-books written by current or former unfree authors, and to send them into the wider world. The benefits of letting people use e-readers whilst in prison, meanwhile, is clear: they can hold over 1000 titles at once, are accessible at all hours, and eradicate any risk of smuggling. They’d
also reduce the need for supervision, thanks to ‘large print’ modes and other aids which make more difficult texts more accessible. Digital libraries allow e-books to be lent to different devices for a certain amount of time, and are rapidly increasingly in popularity in the outside world. Their benefits would only be amplified in a secure setting. An e-book lending system would free up precious space in cells and libraries, and needn’t be expensive either. In fact, after the initial hardware costs are out of the way, building a digital library would be cheaper than finding the cash for new printed books. Purchasing individual titles is cheaper, and there’s never any need to cover damages. Schemes such as Project Gutenburg are even digitising classic texts and making them accessible free of charge. It wouldn’t mean the end of the traditional prison library, either – quite the opposite in fact. Approved e-books would have to be uploaded onto devices by the librarian. Plus, of course, libraries are the cultural centres of any establishment, with so many activities other than book lending taking place – their work must go on long into any digital future. As we continue to publish articles from prison author events, reading groups and creative writing courses, e-readers could only help keep that wave of creativity going!
Piers Barber Online Editor
I’m a writer, researcher and Not Shut Up’s digital guru. Having studied in Edinburgh and California, I carried out extensive research into prisons and other social issues affecting Los Angeles during the 1990s. I joined Not Shut Up in September last year, and am focused on the transformation of our website into the leading platform for the arts of the unfree on the World Wide Web.
Not Shut Up’s new website can be found at www.notshutup.org. We can also be found on Twitter @NotShutUpUK and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/NotShutUpmag. Any queries, comments or contributions to the website can be emailed to piers@notshutup.org.
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English PEN
Make Art Not War Make Art Not war! Start Choirs Not riots! Drop Beats Not bombs! Bomb Walls Not lands! Clap Hands Not guns! Beat Drums Not kids! Beat Box Not ribs!
Poetry and Protest event @ RichMix Can poetry be used as a campaign tool? When does literary activism become propaganda? How can Non Government Organisations (NGOs) work together with artists to raise awareness of human rights abuses? On April 24th, English PEN organised a “Poetry and Protest” event to explore these questions through verse, music and discussion. The editors of two recent anthologies talked about their approach to creative campaigning and political poetry: Sophie Mayer, who edited “Catechism: Poems for Pussy Riot” and Laila Sumpton, who co-edited “In Protest - 150 poems for human rights” with the University of London’s Human Rights Consortium. The evening also highlighted English PEN’s campaign for the release of imprisoned Cameroonian poet Enoh Meyomese and celebrated the publication “Jail Verse”, a collection of his poems translated into English. The event featured students from UEL, including one of our volunteers Emerald Elizabeth Young (UEL PEN Club), and readings from Sophie Mayer, Laila Sumpton, Aoife Mannix and Sonority Turner – here is one of the poems read out that night, so heed the call and send us your power poems!
Sing Songs Not tears! Bring Smiles Not fear! Take Notes Not lives! Pen Words Not knives! Chalk Boards Not lines! Write Rhymes Not fines! Watch Films Not Crimes! Hit Keys Not me! Spit Raps Not blood! Head Nod Not off ! Body Pop Not Bag! Stab strings Not flesh! Snap Pics Not necks! Spin Decks Not Barrels! Spray Paint Not bullets! Don’t shoot Don’t Pull it! Break Beats Not homes! Break Dance Not hearts! Make Art Make Art Make Art Make Art Not War By Sonority Turner
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Science Fiction
Keeping in touch By Mark Campbell, HMP Rye Hill
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ohn’s visor flashed translucent red, alerting him of an incoming warning. He instinctively began moving towards the nearest air dock. His breathing became laboured as he moved through low gravity. A mean face materialised in the head up display. “Lock-down in progress. Prisoners to quarters. Now!” Alpha 4 was a medium security facility. That’s what they called it, but in truth, medium, high or low, no one was escaping Mars and getting back home. Not a chance in red hell. John had been assigned to a termforming unit, installing oxygen converters on the vast ice flows below the surface. A self-sustaining atmosphere would be in place, in some three centuries time. He had been here 430 days already, seen many deaths through accidents and suicides, but maximum alerts were rare. Due to the short life expectancy, human existence on Mars was usually counted in days, rather than years. “What’s up?” queried John to the Officer at the air dock. “No idea. Get in quick.” This was the standard response to any
threat or danger. He didn’t argue. Screws didn’t like to be questioned when they were feeling tetchy. At least he got paid, 450 Unicredits per week, a decent salary, even back on Earth. John was able to send something back for his son, less the 30% contribution to the cost of his own incarceration. Typical of the modern private sector. Alpha 4 was home to a dozen staff and 900 prisoners, most doing 30-year-to-life tariffs, with little chance of parole back on Earth. It was an opportunity to enter a rehabilitation programme that could cut his sentence by up to half. Five years on Mars was ten years off on Earth. John had had to complete physiological, survival and Techmec courses before boarding a shuttle that had taken half a year to reach Mars. As dull as it was getting here, he dreamt of nothing else but the return journey. Global Justice only accepted an offender on the programme if they had family ties. The incentive to return home and reduce time served reduced psychological risk. John entered the pod, no larger than the typical 8.5 m2 cell on Earth. Facilities hadn’t changed since the early 21st century. He shared with Cheng, a worker on the bio farm. Air and hydro plants doubled up,
generating oxygen, as well as providing fruits and vegetables. Cheng brought extra food whenever he could. “Any idea what’s going on?” “No, John, I just grab some stuff so we maybe have proper food. I gonna make spinach leaf soup with tofu, soy beans, spring onion, spice ginger, chilli and lemon grass, OK?” Cheng was a star with the kettle, the only cooking facility they had in the pod. “I’m worried about my Holocom with Mikey tomorrow. I haven’t missed one yet. Don’t fancy waiting a whole month to see him again.” Keeping in touch with his son was John’s main source of joy on this truly alien planet. “No worry, John. Eat good food, sleep, all OK, you see.” “I guess.” Cheng chuckled as he got on with prepping the food. John vaulted up onto the top bunk and activated his portable Holocom to play back last month’s call. Michael’s holographic image sprang into View as he explained what he was doing and demonstrated some cool Robobox moves. A call lasted for 97 minutes, allowing for three 2 minute exchanges for each party. Real-time
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Wired by John McKinney, HMP Stocken
connection was impossible, due to the 25 minute delay between send and receive. Michael ended by lifting his arms to hug his father’s image. It felt like they were really together. The call ended as always with, “I love you dad, please keep in touch.” John wanted so much to be reunited with Michael, but unless he could show real rehabilitation and a change in his mental attitude, he would have to serve out his full sentence. Having shot and maimed a security guard in a robbery gone wrong, John had been sentenced to 30-to-life. But the long ride to Mars gave him a chance. He had been foolish, and truly regretted what he had done. The harsh Martian climate made him aware of the victims, the suffering he had caused others and his own loved ones. But for days, no news came from the screws about the alarm or its cause. The air got staler and left a bitter metallic taste in the mouth. After three days, John and Cheng had exhausted their extra food rations and were growing restless. Even the 4D channels from Earth had been cut off. He had missed his slot. Michael would be worried that he had failed to call. His wife, ex now, remained supportive despite a new partner. She would check with Justice that
he was still alive. Finally, the podcom came to life. “All prisoners to the main hall.” The door slid open as an unseen hand activated the unlock programme. Inmates began to emerge. There was a rising buzz of voices over the continuous hum of oxygen scrubbers, angry complaints being aired about hunger and lack of news. “What’s going on?” “Couldn’t take another day of that!” “I need a shower!” “Why did they cut off the TV?” The Senior Officer on the podium stared down at the central assembly block. He was flanked by a handful of officers holding AK-1000 laser rifles. John’s eyes shifted suspiciously at the fire power on display. “There is no easy way to say this, but I want you to remain calm. The news is bad. Really bad.” The S.O. was clearly trying to fight back tears. This didn’t help settle the crowd of cons, who were getting restless, waiting for him to get to the point. “It seems... seems Earth was hit by a Z3 asteroid. All contact has been lost. We only have reports coming from the Moon colonies. The damage... was complete. The population... everyone... gone.” A roar went up from the gathered crowd, officers
aiming their rifles in panic. “Wait! The Moon bases are taking control over all remaining galactic outposts. The Governor is offering an immediate amnesty to all prisoners! We are all trapped here now! All free men! We must work together to build a new society. Our work here offers the only hope... the only hope we have of building another habitable planet. Listen! We must ensure the survival of the human race!” John sat on the floor, stunned. The others had fallen silent. After an initial outcry, there was no panic, just bewilderment. How could this be? Michael! Dear god, Michael! Officers began to mingle with the prisoners. John’s head was spinning. Free men again. He had achieved his goal, but not as intended. This was like dying and being reborn again. A life on Mars! He held his head in his hands, his despair complete. There would be no more keeping in touch.
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Useful Info
Art organisations worth knowing about Here is a list of organisations working all across the UK with those who are or have been in custody – if there is anyone we have missed out, let us know!
ArTs AlliAnce is a coalition of artists, arts and Criminal Justice Sector organisations and individuals who work with prisoners, those on probation and ex-offenders in the community, promoting the power of the arts in transforming lives. Arts Alliance, 59 Carter Lane, London EC4V 5AQ cleAn breAk is a theatre company with an independent education programme, which uses theatre for personal and political change, working with women whose lives have been affected by the criminal justice system. Clean Break, 2 Patshull Road, London NW5 2LB english Pen is the founding centre of a worldwide writers’ association with 145 centres in more than 100 countries. They campaign to defend writers and readers in the UK and around the world whose human right to freedom of expression is at risk. English PEN, Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3GA fine cell Work is a Registered Charity that teaches needlework to prison inmates and sells their products. The prisoners do the work when they are locked in their cells, and the earnings give them hope, skills and independence. Fine Cell Work, 38 Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 0RE inside job ProducTions is a unique new non-profit multi-media production company which works with women prisoners to produce highly professional video, print and multimedia products with a social purpose. Inside Job Productions, 16 Hoxton Square, London N1 6NT koesTler TrusT are the UK’s best-known prison arts charity. They have been awarding, exhibiting and selling artworks by offenders, detainees and secure patients for 50 years.
Koestler Arts Centre, 168a Du Cane Road, London W12 0TX Prisoners’ Penfriends was formed to build on the prisoner-penpal scheme created by the Prison Reform Trust. It is approved by the Prison Service and provides a confidential forwarding service, with guidelines, training and advice. Penfriends, PO box 33460, London SW18 5YB The Prison ArTs foundATion aims to release the creative self of all prisoners, ex-prisoners, young offenders and ex-young offenders in Northern Ireland using all of the arts and crafts including writing, drama, fine art, craft, music and dance. Prison Arts Foundation, Unit 3 Clanmil Arts & Business Centre, Northern Whig Building, 2-10 Bridge Street, Belfast BT1 1LU The Prison rAdio AssociATion is an award winning education charity that provides support, guidance and expertise to existing prison radio stations and advises prisons interested in setting up radio stations and radio training facilities. Prison Radio Association, HMP Brixton, Jebb Avenue, London SW2 5XF
synergy TheATre ProjecT, established in 1999, works towards rehabilitation with prisoners and ex-prisoners through theatre and related activities. Synergy Theatre Project, 8 St Thomas Street, London SE1 9RR
NOT SHUT UP Equalities and Inclusion Policy NOT SHUT UP encourages and supports anyone who has experienced incarceration and wants to express their creativity through literature and other forms of art. We understand that “difference” and “otherness” is a daily reality for those behind bars and we are committed to addressing issues of prejudice and discrimination in relation to gender and gender identity, sexual preference, disability, partnership status, race, nationality, ethnic origin, political or religious faith, age or socio-economic class of individuals and groups.
The reAder orgAnisATion shared reading groups contribute to long-term, sustainable changes to prison reform, offender rehabilitation and offender prevention. The Reader Organisation, The Friary Centre, Bute Street, Liverpool L5 3LA
NOT SHUT UP is an artist-led organisation – those involved in it have often had direct experience of prisons and understand the range of challenges and inequalities faced by those we work with: reduced access to education and the arts, high levels of psychoemotional illness and low levels of physical fitness and well-being, social and cultural exclusion and others. We see the arts as essential in helping both artists and audiences understand and celebrate the notion of a thriving, diverse and modern society.
sTorybook dAds is a registered charity based in Dartmoor Prison. Their aim is to maintain family ties and facilitate learning for prisoners and their children through the provision of story CDs. Storybook Dads, HMP Dartmoor, Princetown, Yelverton, Devon PL20 6RR
NOT SHUT UP keeps its policies and procedures under continual stakeholder review in order to ensure that the realities of discrimination, exclusion, oppression and alienation that may be an aspect of previous experience of its partners, as well as project participants, are addressed appropriately.
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Managing Editor: Marek Kazmierski Poetry Editor: Anna Robinson Art Editor: Matthew Meadows Creative Director: Phil Tristram Online Editor: Piers Barber Thanks to our Trustees: Kate Pullinger (Chair) Jane Wynn (Treasurer) Timothy Firmston Simon Kirwin Sarah Leipciger Sarah Mansell Simon Miles Annette Prandzioch Raphael Rowe Ella Simpson
NOT SHUT UP generates no income of its own and is produced solely through the generosity of Arts Council England and our patrons, which include: 29 May 1961 Trust Anton Jurgens Charitable Trust Authors’ Licensing & Collecting Society Batty Trust Bonus Trust City & Metropolitan Welfare Fund Coutts Charitable Trust David Hammond Charitable Foundation Eleanor Rathbone Charitable Trust English PEN Esmée Fairbairn Foundation Foyle Foundation Garden Court Garfield Weston Foundation Garrick Charitable Trust Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation
Jessie Spencer Trust J Paul Getty Jr. Charitable Trust Goldsmiths’ Company Lady Hind Trust Lankelly Chase Foundation Leigh Trust Mercer’s Company Michael Varah Memorial Fund Norda Trust Rathbones Royal London Society Sheriffs’ & Recorder’s Fund Sir James Roll Charitable Trust Swan Mountain Trust Topinambour Trust Tudor Trust
Not Shut Up is a registered charity (Charity No. 1090610) and a company limited by guarantee (registered in London No. 4260355).
Subscriptions
Anyone interested in submitting work, volunteering or working as part of the Not Shut Up Academy, which works with in- and post- custody writers on developing their creative entrepreneurial skills, is invited to write in to us at the address below or contact us via our website.
Establishment Annual Subscription: ten copies four times a year, p&p included, for just £50.00.
BCM NOT SHUT UP PO Box 12 London WC1N 3XX Or Freepost RRXA-AHGR-ZCZL
Individual Annual Subscription: one copy four times a year, p&p included, for just £15.00.
Cut out and send the coupon to BCM NOT SHUT UP PO Box 12 London WC1N 3XX
Please send me one / ten copies four times a year. I enclose a cheque / postal order for £15 / £50 Name Address Email contact
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Made Corrections
Vaiva Katinaityte: Arts as opportunity We talk to Made Corrections’ photographer and graphic designer about her trip to Kaunas prison in Lithuania and the transformative power of the arts. not shut up: Tell us how you came to be involved in Made Corrections and prison arts. VaiVa Katinaityte: I left Lithuania when I was 20 years old, moved to Turkey, Ireland, Norway and Czech Republic, then recently, after I finished three year studies in Prague, I chose to come to London. I had read about David Ellis, who had done art and performance projects in Lithuania before. So I contacted him through Facebook, not knowing anyone in England. He was really helpful, took me to some galleries, and then introduced me to Made Corrections. A month later, I was going to prison with them in Lithuania! nsup: Tell us about the recent exhibition in West Bank Gallery in London. VK: We showed London audiences photos of young offenders from our first trip to Kaunas prison last year, taken by Donatas Stankevičius. We also had big posters of the portraits made by the international artist JR. David, Dean and Olly also talked about the whole project, lots of people came from the Lithuanian Cultural Centre. A month later, we went back to Kaunas to work with prisoners on putting street art in a place where there are no streets. We had a team of urban artists doing some graffiti on walls and courtyards. They also did a huge painting in the segregation unit. The second part was us pasting the massive posters from JR inside the jail. We worked in the short sentence and long sentence
units, and it was easier in the more secure, long sentence unit. The boys seemed more brave, they felt more comfortable, and spoke to us more freely.
nsup: Did anything surprise you about the project? VK: Yeah, many things! It was my first time in jail, and I didn’t have any expectations. Unlike the staff, the boys believed what we were doing. Most of them had no contact with art before then. After a few days, some of the long term boys asked the security guards if they could paint the exercise machines in their gym, and the guards said yes! At least one of them said he will now spend his canteen money not buying cookies or drinks, but paint, so I felt that we have achieved something. And another story touched me a lot. In the short term unit, three boys sat on a bench and said how the word in the prison was that those inmates who were involved were “kissing teacher’s asses”. That they were doing it only to make their sentences even shorter. I explained that it was a good
opportunity to meet foreigners, engage with well known artists, learn something new, improve the way the prison looks. Then I left them to sit and think. By the end of that same day, all the guys had got off the bench and got stuck in. We had some presentations and lectures on street art for the prisoners, because most of the boys don’t know anything about JR or public art. Actually, for them street art is associated with skate kids, who come from more wealthy families, and so they tend to fight and not make art together, so this too was really important. To bring those two groups of youths together around creating public art, rather than fighting in the streets.
Made Corrections is looking for partner organisations and establishments who are interested in bringing JR’s Inside Out project to their establishment. They would like to have photos of prisoners from different parts of the world displayed in different prisons – in this way, people can see themselves in the mirror of other places and other cultures and realise that we can and must all learn from each other. Otherwise we will always be stuck in the same old groove. If you are interested in working with Made Corrections, contact us via our postal address or through www.madecorrections.com
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Made Corrections team hard at work in Kaunas prison.
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PhotograPhy by Donatas Stankevicius
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