Creative Learning for Justice

Creative Learning for Justice (CLJ) is a project led by Ana Chamberlen, Ruth Bernatek and Henrique Carvalho, co-organisers of the International Justice Arts Network. This project is funded by Warwick Innovations and it is also supported by the Centre for Critical Legal Studies.

The project builds on previous work by the researchers and combines creative pedagogic interventions inside prisons, prison educator training, and arts-based events, exhibitions and outputs aimed at public engagement. The project will formalise a model of prison learning designed and piloted by the team which draws from critical pedagogic approaches and arts-based methods; they have been utilising this pedagogic model at their prison teaching since 2024.

Between 2026-2027 the team will host various activities and initiatives inside prisons and beyond. In particular, the team will launch the Just Arts magazine, a digital and print resource dedicated to artistic interventions on prisons and justice that features and critically focuses on the work of artists from marginalised backgrounds and with lived experiences of injustice and criminalisation.

At a time of significant cuts in prison education funding and in the arts more generally, this project seeks to centre the University’s unique position and civic responsibility to offer life-changing impact to marginalized populations through a creative approach to emancipatory pedagogies and justice.

More information will follow in due course.

---