Director of Good Vibrations, Cathy Eastburn, and colleagues will be speaking at the Royal College of Psychiatry on Wednesday 19 September. Click here for info
From July 4th to 7th Dr Laura Caulfield – author of ‘Promoting Positive Change’ – of the Centre for Applied Criminology at Birmingham City University, UK, will be speaking at the Asian Psychological Association conference, Tarumanagara University, Jakarta. The conference’s theme is “Mindfulness, Wellbeing and Positive Psychology”.
Laura will be speaking to an international audience about the positive impact of Good Vibration’s projects on men and women in UK prisons. Based on 18 months of research, Laura will argue that for some offenders, participation in a Good Vibrations project can contribute to positive changes in behaviour, and that these changes can come directly from taking part in creative activities and also from the by-products of such activities; including improvements in self-confidence, communication and social skills. Finally, she will propose that now is the time for a serious consideration of how arts-based programmes can work together with traditional programmes to best target offenders’ need and risk.
Web link
This week’s Good Vibrations project at Deerbolt Young Offenders Institution is being run as part of the Gong Festival, an annual celebration of “northern gamelan”. See the Gong Festival’s website for more details….
Cathy, 10 May 2012
Nick Hardwick, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons (and former trustee of Good Vibrations) gave the Prison Education Trust Annual Speech on 18 October. His wide-ranging speech included looking at his experiences in the role, describing what has most shocked and surprised him in his first year as Chief Inspector.
His overall message was the absolutely crucial role that education plays in the rehabilitation of offenders. He believes that prisons’ and policy makers’ aspirations are far too low at present. Education needs to be at the centre of a prison’s task rather than seen as a luxury add-on.
Nick listed 10 things that he wants to see to bring education into the heart of prison life, including “arts projects that encourage prisoners to work collaboratively, to apply themselves to a task and increase their insight”. He talked about Good VIbrations as a great example of what arts projects can achieve – including mentioning that he was initially a sceptic of our work, as “sitting on the floor drumming – not my thing at all” but that we confounded his expectations!
October 2010: There’s an article by Laura Caulfield and Professor David Wilson from Birmingham City University in the current Journal of Social Criminology about the impact of Good VIbrations on women prisoners. Having interviewed women prisoners and prison staff shortly after a Good Vibrations project, they conclude that:
“The project clearly had an impact on these women, providing short-term improvements in coping ability and emotional issues – issues that are particularly significant for women in prison, and statistically associated with risk of reoffending for women. Furthermore, the findings suggest the project may have a positive impact upon women’s levels of self-harming behaviour”
Although this research was only short-term, the researchers’ view is that:
“Against a background of emerging evidence of the positive impact of arts based project with men in prison, the findings presented here suggest that this project has the potential to have a long-lasting positive effect on women offenders’ attitudes and behaviour and improve coping skills”
Good Vibrations has recently been awarded “Approved Regime Intervention” status by the Directorate of High Security Prisons. Basically this means that we are now officially recognised as an effective tool for high security prisons in their efforts to reduce reoffending. We are hoping that this will encourage more prisons (of all categories) to book our courses.