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Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
This interdisciplinary collection examines the thriving world of arts and creativity within prisons and other sites of confinement, revealing the complex terrain of ‘carceral aesthetics’. Set within environments marked by repression, contributors reveal how artistic practices become vital strategies of coping, resistance and political expression, while also being entangled in institutional rehabilitation agendas.
Bringing together global scholarship, artist experiences and practice-based insights, the book interrogates the motivations, tensions and histories that shape prisoner arts, highlighting their role as testimonies to the lived experience—and pains—of captivity. Together, the chapters offer a theoretical framework for understanding the promises and contradictions of carceral arts today.
'This is a genuinely transdisciplinary collection that brings together a diversity of epistemological frameworks to discuss the relationship between imprisonment and creative expression.' Lucia Bracco Bruce, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru
'A field-defining collection for research and practice of carceral arts—critical, polyphonic, and care-oriented, with incarcerated voices at its very core.' Yusuke Kazama, Prison Arts Connections, Tokyo
'If you're a prison arts provider, you need to read this. You'll be inspired by your global peers. This book shows the power of artmaking in spaces that feel designed to crush the spirit.' Suzanne Kessler, Rehabilitation Through the Arts, USA
'An exciting collection that forefronts lived experiences, diverse arts-perspectives, and is ethically and politically in tune with the justice potential of prisoner arts.' Steeldoor Studios, Artist
Anastasia Chamberlen is Professor of Sociology and Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded Captive Arts research project, University of Warwick.
Ruth Bernatek is Research Fellow at the School of Law, University of Warwick and was previously Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Captive Arts project.
1. Introduction – Anastasia Chamberlen and Ruth Bernatek
Part I: Identity & The Creative Self
2. In Conversation With Dalton Harrison – Ruth Bernatek, Anastasia Chamberlen, and Dalton Harrison
3. Nameless Not Shameless: International Visual Art Prison Collaborations and the Questions They Raise About Artist Anonymity – Faye Claridge
4. Marks, Doodles, Care, and Agency: Fieldwork Fragments From an Emerging Study Into Self-Led Creativity and Wellbeing Inside Prison Cells – Andrea Hadley-Johnson
5. Intersections on the Inside: Gender and Class in a Prison Art Studio in California, USA – Laura Pecenco
6. Escaping the Framing: Common Aesthetic Practices in Latin American Prisons – Cristiane Checchia and Mário René Rodríguez Torres
7. Overcoming Dehumanisation: Prison Arts and Future IDs – Luis S. Garcia
Part II: Representations & Methods
8. In Conversation With Damien Linnane – Ruth Bernatek, Anastasia Chamberlen, and Damien Linnane
9. A Prison, a Prisoner, and a Prison Guard: An Exploration of Carcerality in the Middle East and North African (MENA) Region – Susan Aboeid, Supna Kapoor, and Sumaya Tabbah
10. Getting Out by Getting In: The Group as an Escape – Charlie Weinberg
11. Carceral Performance, Histories of Prison Arts, and Liberatory Memory Work in Rideout’s The Ballad of the Whistling Man – Sarah Bartley
12. Definitive Practice: Promoting Infrastructures of Creative Rehabilitation in England – Sarah Hartley
Part III: Work, Healing & Resistance
13. In Conversation With Jess Collier – Anastasia Chamberlen and Jess Collier
14. A Story of Creative Writing in Prisons: Working on Generative Justice – Ella Simpson
15. Empowering Voices: Applied Puppetry as a Tool for Healing and Identity Mapping in Young Refugee Inmates in Greece – Magda Vitsou
16. From ‘Crime Scene’ to ‘Music Scene’? Music Therapy in a Scandinavian Prison – Kjetil Hjørnevik
17. Bodies, Resilience, and Dance in French and Canadian Prisons – Sylvie Frigon and Claire Jenny
18. Prison Writing and Critical Perspectives on Justice and Incarceration in Argentina – Juan Pablo Parchuc
19. Epilogue: 4 Letters From HMP Long Lartin