Criminal Justice
We deliver creative and holistic theatre workshops and projects in criminal justice settings including children’s secure care homes, probation, youth justice, prisons and community resettlement hubs.
What’s Included?
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Exciting and innovative creative workshops including games, role-play, performance, and self-reflection
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Theory backed workshops, creatively using NVC and restorative approaches to build skills
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Creative facilitator team with experience in prisons and nationally vetted pool of artists
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Post-release support in community hubs in certain regions of UK
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All our GM prison leavers have access to free creative programmes, workshops and our mental health project Wellbeing Your Way
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Participants are accredited with ASDAN awards in relevant life skills such as Independent living, Leadership and Expressive Arts
Impact & Results
Academic papers on criminal justice programmes:
Average increase in Wellbeing Score of 7.73 (SWEMWBS) on recent programme analysis:
Scoring indicated a substantial improvement in reported well-being. At individual level a change of between 1 and 3 points meets the threshold for a statistically important change and our impact data recorded double this.
Reducing violence and self-harm was targeted in three ways:
1.
Exercises and activities with
gradually increasing levels
of difficulty.
These developed participants’ self-confidence and willingness to do more challenging work.
2.
In reflective discussions, where facilitators provided participants
with alternative frameworks of thinking informed by trauma-informed and non-violent communication approaches.
3.
Enjoyable and supportive physical and expressive activities focussed on the expression of thoughts and feelings about violence and self-harm related issues’.
(University of Central Lancashire, External Evaluator)
‘The module raised self-esteem, enabling re-evaluation of past ‘failures’ and future opportunities’
(Professor Lynne Froggett)
What Our
Participants Say
“Fantastic, brought to life some of the issues”
External Training participant
“Thought it was very powerful. Should be mandatory for all staff (UK wide and government)”
External Training participant
“I have loved the discussions and activities around strength and what it is to be strong and how to be assertive without being aggressive”
Community project participant
“I was feeling down before the session but now I’m happy”
Community project participant
‘I have a stronger understanding and the ability to communicate, debate and share opinions’
Workshop participant:
‘What was best? Everything. The actors were great. The flow of conversations. The ‘brave space’ of discussions.’
Workshop participant:
‘Helped me understand real world problems that could occur and what they could result in.’
Workshop participant:
“I always thought getting mental health support would be horrible, but now that I’ve done these sessions with Odd Arts, I feel like I can trust a mental health worker and tell her some of the bad things that happened when I was young.”
Education Participant:
“I find that I often don’t take the support I’m being offered either. I don’t know why I do that. But I think we both should. We should get some support, so we can feel better”
Education Participant:
“It feels like a safe space and that’s hard to find in prison”
Wellbeing Your Way Participant
Coming Soon
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Video Case Studies
Watch real stories from our participants
Launching soon.
How to book or find out more
Delivered by HMPPS Creating Future Opportunities
Building on over 20 years experience working to challenge inequalities and create opportunities for individuals facing the greatest levels of discrimination and disadvantage.
Our work as part of CFO (Creating Future Opportunities ) program, partnering with Ingeus and HM Prison and Probation Service is a programme called:
Building an understanding of ourselves and others through creativity
Designed to support participants to:
- Explore their own physical and emotional needs
- Increase awareness and understanding of emotions
- Improve communication with themselves and others
- Build self-esteem, improve mental health and overcome barriers
- Reduce risk of violence and harmful behaviours
- Recognise protective measures to increase well-being
We use a combination of games, discussion, drama, creative writing and psychology. Each programme is flexible and designed around the needs and wishes of participants. We work with participants between 6-10 guided learning hours dependent on the project.
This programme is currently part of our ASDAN accreditation and enables us to award participants with a credit towards a module in Expressive Arts (Level 1)
Within this Expressive Arts short course they complete 3 key elements:
- Take part in warm-up introductory sessions for one or more drama and creative writing.
- Experiment with ideas for depicting characters, considering different aspects, such as: characterisation/settings/visual and tactile
- Take part in drama and creative writing work around identity, thinking about our needs, feelings and values and learning skills in compassionate communication
This work is currently delivered across three prisons (HMP Drake Hall, HMP Featherstone, HMP Ranby) and four activity hubs (Nottingham, Leicester, Stoke, Wolverhampton) in the East / West Midlands