This summer I attended a film festival screening of Sing Sing (2024), an atypical prison drama starring Oscar-nominated Colman Domingo and former inmate Clarence Maclin. The film is based on the true story of a drama program – run by nonprofit organisation Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) – at Sing Sing prison, and has created a buzz thanks to rave media reviews and the fact that the majority of the cast were formerly incarcerated.

Dr Anastasia Chamberlen is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick. Her work has explored a range of different topics in relation to criminology, including prisons, the sociology of punishment, feminist theory, and, more recently, the connections between punishment and art in the carceral context. Dr Chamberlen presented some of her ongoing research on this theme at the final lecture of the All Souls Seminar of Hilary term 2021; considering the theoretical and methodological tensions and emancipatory potential of the ‘curious symbiosis’ between imprisonment and art.

We Roar is an extraordinary exhibition of artwork and poetry created by 40 men and women incarcerated in 21 UK & US prisons. Throughout 2024 it toured to nine prisons in the UK, with an opening event in each to celebrate participants, inspire peers and connect with staff and visitors. Its significance as an exhibition by and for people facing extreme barriers to cultural engagement is huge.