A group of 15 of us – past Good Vibrations participants from various different projects in prisons, probation and with NEET young people, plus some Good Vibrations team members and a couple of willing volunters who’d NEVER played gamelan before – spent 1.5 hours working together, using the Good Vibrations approach, to create a short set of 3 pieces from scratch, which we then performed in front of a large and appreciative audience at the Koestler Exhibition Opening Day at the Southbank! (picture Brian Benson/Koestler Trust)
The Koestler Trust annual exhibition of art by prisoners etc, curated this year by Mercury Award winning rap artist Speech Debelle, opens next week at the Southbank. Public opening day on Tuesday 24 September from 10am. A Good Vibrations group will perform on the Ballroom Floor of the Royal Festival Hall at 130pm – come and say hello!
Join us for four days of workshops, presentations, debates and performances as we highlight the creative, important and inspiring work done with gamelan (and other artforms) in criminal justice and the community.
Over the four days of events we will be exploring three main themes:
• The psychological and social benefits of gamelan and other artforms.
• The realities and challenges of running arts projects in criminal-justice settings.
• The practicalities of facilitating gamelan workshops and other arts with challenging client groups, and celebrating the art created.
The event is of benefit to anybody interested in the role of arts in reducing reoffending and in generating wider social benefits, for example:
• prison governors
• prison staff responsible for organising arts activities
• prison education providers
• those working in secure hospitals and other secure settings
• probation and YOI services
Confirmed speakers include:
• Nick Hardwick (Chief Inspector of Prisons)
• Michael Spurr (Chief Executive of the Prison Service)
• Professor Alison Liebling (Cambridge University’s Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice)
• Alan Davey (Chief Executive of Arts Council England)
• plus prison governors, officers and leading arts-in-criminal-justice organisations
To book tickets and for more information about the content of the days go to the Southbank website. Download an e-flyer here.
Tickets:
One Day Pass (for 17, 18, 19 or 20 October): £150 (£75 concessions)
Joint Pass for Thursday 17 & Friday 18 October: £280
Joint Pass for Saturday 19 & Sunday 20 October: £280
Four-Day Pass (17 – 20 October): £390
Bursaries covering up to 100% of ticket costs are available from Good Vibrations to enable people to attend who cannot otherwise afford it. Prison staff with very limited training budgets are particularly encouraged to apply for these. For more info email: info@good-vibrations.org.uk with ‘Sharing Good Vibrations Bursaries’ in the subject header and giving your name, job title, prison name/organisation and which day or days you would like to attend.
A new book, “Interventions in Criminal Justice”, out shortly, has a chapter by Laura Caufield and Professor David Wilson on the role of arts in prisons. Good Vibrations is used as a case study. The rest of the book looks really interesting too…
“This exciting new book brings together the experiences and expertise of a range of practitioners who work within criminal justice and provides a broad and informative account of a variety of intervention techniques. From pharmacological approaches, through the treatment of various specific conditions and on to the use of poetry and art by prisoners, the book offers a series of thought-provoking chapters that will help inform the practice of anyone who works with this vulnerable population.
The book is edited by Peter Jones, a leading figure in the field of working therapeutically with offenders.
Chapter 1: Working with offenders with personality disorders
Michael Brookes
Chapter 2: One body, many voices: the complexity of working with a patient with
dissociative identity disorder
Lynn Greenwood
Chapter 3: The role of the arts as an intervention with offenders in prison
Laura Caulfield and David Wilson
Chapter 4: Beautiful sentence: poetry as a therapeutic intervention
Leah Thorn
Chapter 5: The potential of prison health
Lars Møller and Alex Gatherer
Chapter 6: A gender responsive approach to female sex offenders
Sherry Ashfield, Sheila Brotherston and Hilary Eldridge
Chapter 7: Drug treatment and harm reduction in prisons
Heino Stöver
Chapter 8: Suicide, attempted suicide and self-injury in prisons
David Crighton
Chapter 9: The perils and promise of multidisciplinary working
Richard Shuker
Chapter 10: Cognitive behavioural therapy
Euan Hails
Chapter 11: Working with women who self-harm in prison settings
Julia MS Rose
Vital information for: Probation officers, social workers, counsellors, psychologists who work within the criminal justice system.”
There’s an article about Good Vibrations in the latest edition of Music Education Research. It pulls together findings from longitudinal studies of Good Vibrations participants over the last few years, showing that participating in Good Vibrations inspires positive change in individuals. Using an “Activity Theory” model, the article also looks at why Good Vibrations inspires this positive change. Activity Theory is a framework for looking at personal learning and development in a social environment. Click here to access the article.
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”