Cornton Vale is Scotland’s only all-female prison, located 2 miles from Stirling University.  The two organisations have been working together on an arts project “Create and Curate” which has developed the creative abilities of the participants from Cornton Vale and compliments the work of the prison-arts charity, the Koesler Trust, whose exhibition “Catching Dreams”  was shown in the South Bank Centre in London in 2014.

The project, backed by funding from the Scottish Government agency Education Scotland and  supported by Artlink Central and New College Lanarkshire, which runs the Cornton Vale Learning Centre, included several creative fields with the participants selecting a work from the Unviversity’s own art collection that would inspire them to create their own art through creative writing and three dimensional “poem-houses” which the then curated into an exhibition.

The poet Evlynn Sharp led creative writing workshops at the prison and encouraged the women with their creative writing, with editing the exhibition catalogue and with copy for the prison arts magazine, the artist Brigid Collins ran workshops to help the women create their sculptural “poem-houses” while Sarah Bromage from the University of Stirling organised workshops to provide the women with the skills to curate the exhibition of the work which was held in the Central Block of Cornton Vale last year. A selection is now on display in the Pathfoot Building at the Stirling University

From everyone’s perspective, this project has been a success, most particularly the participants:

Angie, a prisoner at Cornton Vale, said: “The best thing about the project is how inspirational I’ve found it. Writing your thoughts and life experiences down on paper makes everyone open up and get to know each other.

“Doing our creative writing I personally think is very therapeutic. It’s amazing when we read our work back, how far we have come.”

Rita, another participant, said it was “a way to unlock all sorts of emotions and feelings without judgement . . . an artistic breath of fresh air”.

A copy of the catalogue which was created as part of the initiative can be found here.   The illustrations show some of the work selected.

The strapline of the Scottish Prison Service is “Unlocking Potential – Changing Lives”. This project demonstrates how the training in the arts can contribute to this.