Captive Arts Events

As part of the Captive Arts project, the project team are very excited to be able to bring you a series of high level and international discussions and events over the next few months to address our scholarly, activist and practitioner understandings of incarcerated artists and of creative expression in prisons.

Aesthetics & Justice Seminars

These seminars are organized by Anastasia Chamberlen and Ruth Bernatek, Warwick Sociology, as part of the Captive Arts Research Project (AHRC). Sponsored by the Centre for Critical Legal Studies and the Criminal Justice Centre, Warwick Law School.

#3 Exploring Soundscapes of IncarcerationLink opens in a new window

19th February 2025

2:00-3.15pm

S2.09Link opens in a new window & Teams onlineLink opens in a new window

Event Information

In our 3rd Aesthetics & Justice seminar, professor of musicology Laudan Nooshin will share her recent research exploring the sounds and aestheticization of historic sites of violence, in relation to Qasr Prison in Iran. She is joined by criminologist Dr Kate Herrity, who’s talk will draw upon her recent book "Sound Order and Survival in Prison", a deep ethnographic study of the sonic rhythms and routines of an English prison.

Speaker: Professor Laudan Nooshin (City St George’s, University of London)

Title: Sonic Agency, Discipline and Aestheticizing Violence at the Qasr Museum (Iran)

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Seminar Information

This talk explores the role of sound in a former carceral space, now a museum. The Qasr (‘Castle’) Museum and Gardens date back to 1807, soon after Tehran became the capital city of Iran. Built by order of Fath Ali Shah (r.1797-1834), it served as a royal summer palace before falling into disuse. After Reza Shah Pahlavi came to power in the 1920s, and as part of growing state security at that time, a new building was constructed on the site and opened in 1929 as Iran’s first modern prison. From the 1930s Qasr became infamous as a place of detention for political prisoners. The site continued to serve as a prison until the early 2000s and was later renovated and re-opened as a museum and park in 2012.

The talk is in two parts: the first explores the prison’s sonic past with a focus on the period following the 1953 coup d’etat and drawing on archival sources and testimonies of former political prisoners. I examine how music and sound afforded prisoners agency, whilst at the same time serving the prison’s disciplinary regime. I then examine the prison’s transformation into a museum and the role of sound in aestheticizing this site of historic violence. I ask what kinds of sonic imaginaries are performed at Qasr and more generally what the implications are for sound when a site of incarceration becomes a tourist attraction.

Speaker: Dr Kate Herrity (University of Cambridge)

Title: Appreciating the ugly: Researching the impact of prison soundscapes

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Seminar Information

“I’ve been in jail ever since I was 15, so all I hear, every day, is keys. Even when I get out, if I’ve been out on the road, all I hear is keys and I think I’m in jail.”

Even the most cursory engagement with romantic poetry prompts a consideration of the influence and effect of immersion in the natural environment. Here I reflect on the impact of prolonged exposure to clangs, bangs, screams and alarms. How might we research soundscapes and what value might that bring to our understanding? How does this affect those who live and work in these environments and what does this tell us about prison life?

Speaker Bio

Kate Herrity is currently fellow in punishment at Kings Cambridge. She has an interest in working at the boundaries between fields and ideas, with a particular focus on the sensory.

#2 Creative Encounters in Prison and Police CustodyLink opens in a new window

22nd January 2025

2:00-3.15pm

Teams onlineLink opens in a new window

Seminar RecordingLink opens in a new window

Event Information

Speaker: Jo Metcalf, University of Hull

Title: Contesting Popular Representations of Imprisonment in Creative Writings Produced through Transatlantic Cultural Exchange

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Seminar Information

How do people incarcerated in the United States and in the United Kingdom consume popular cultural representations of imprisonment? And how do they represent themselves in creative narratives written for audiences of their peers on the other side of the Atlantic? To probe these questions, this short presentation explains an educational programme that was simultaneously conducted in prison facilities in the UK and the US in 2023/24. Funded by the British Academy, we critically studied representations of prisons found in films, poetry, music, memoirs, and novels. These discussions were followed by a range of linked creative writing exercises and then writings were swapped across the Atlantic between the prisoner participants for peer review. Our findings suggest that when incarcerated writers use an international lens to critically interrogate pop-cultural representations of incarceration, it can help them to understand the structural conditions of imprisonment while also articulating the personal and political struggles they have faced as a result.

Speaker Bio

Jo Metcalf is a Senior Lecturer in American Studies and Criminology at the |University of Hull. She is the co-founder and co-director of the Cultures of Incarceration Centre and has research interests in US / UK prison cultures, in particular the culture and politics of reading and writing while incarcerated.

Speaker: Professor Layla Skinns (University of Sheffield)

Title: The art of innovation? Effecting change in police custody through theatre and animation

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Seminar Information

There is a lengthy history of organisations such as the Koestler Trust and the National Criminal Justice Arts Alliance using art and cultural interventions with prisoners, ex-offenders and those at risk of becoming involved in crime to effect change, recognising the power of art as a springboard for innovation and for envisaging a different future. In this paper, however, I explore the potential of art – in particular theatre and animation – to effect change amongst criminal justice practitioners. To do this, I draw on the ‘good’ police custody studyLink opens in a new window. In particular, I examine the process by which good practice recommendations from the research were brought to life through a theatre production, ‘I am Human’Link opens in a new window, in collaboration with Dead Earnest theatre company. I also explore how and why this play was subsequently transformed into an animation and the ways in which both the play and animation have been used to impact on the policies and practices of police custody staff, all in the midst of a global pandemic. In so doing I examine the transformative potential of art, concluding that the art of criminal justice is also potentially the art of innovation.

Speaker Bio

Layla Skinns is a Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice in the Centre for Criminological Research and School of Law at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the use and misuse of police powers, particularly inside police detention in the Anglophone world, as well as on police misconduct and how this is held to account.

#1 Sound X JusticeLink opens in a new window

Tuesday 19th November 2024

1.15-2.30pm

Warwick Law S2.09Link opens in a new window & online

Event Information

Speaker: Nomi DaveLink opens in a new window

Title: Big Mouths + Feminist Ears

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Seminar Information

How might the law learn to listen with a feminist ear? Big Mouth Link opens in a new windowis a documentary film in production, directed by Bremen Donovan and co-produced with Nomi Dave, on testimony and voice in struggles for sexual justice. It explores how people speak and act when the law fails to hear them.

Speaker Bio

Nomi Dave researches sound and the law, with a focus on sexual justice, technology, and violence. She is a former lawyer and currently works as Associate Professor of Music and Co-Director of the Sound Justice LabLink opens in a new window, at the University of Virginia.

Speaker: Steve UrquhartLink opens in a new window

Title: Doing Bird: how prisoners engage with archive birdsong recordings.

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Seminar Information

Prisoners at HMP Perth in Scotland have been engaging with archive birdsong and oral history recordings – some more than sixty years old – in a unique, creative audio art collaboration. Peesweeps meet hip hop beats, grouse unlock coded prison language, and an unhatched kestrel chick provokes philosophy…

The sound artist Steve Urquhart explains how this project came about, in the context of his work within prison settings. We’ll listen to excerpts from the Doing Bird mixtapes, and we’ll discuss the inventive ways in which prisoners responded to this extraordinary project, and re-evaluated their connection to the world beyond prison walls.

https://www.listentosteve.com/doingbirdLink opens in a new window

SpeakerBio

Steve Urquhart is a sound artist, radio producer and composer. He creates documentaries and series for BBC (Radio 4, Radio 3, World Service) plus many other platforms worldwide, as well as audio installations and soundscapes for exhibitions and arts festivals. Steve prioritises projects which enable marginalised communities to explore and excel in audio production. His pioneering work with National Prison Radio has led to funded research in criminal justice settings across Europe. Steve lives in Glasgow.

https://www.listentosteve.comLink opens in a new window

Prisoner Arts in Context: Global Perspectives, an international symposium

Thursday 21 November 2024

All day

Warwick Arts CentreLink opens in a new window & Faculty of Arts BuildingLink opens in a new window

Prisoner Arts in Context is an international, multi-stakeholder symposium bringing together academics, practitioners, artists, activists, government and prison service officials to explore the creative lives of people serving time in prisons across the world.

Led by the Captive Arts research team at Warwick, with contributions from We Roar & supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, an ESRC Impact Acceleration Account fund and Arts Council UK, this one-day event was centred around interactive panel discussions, performance and exhibited works, that engage with Prisoner Arts’ distinctive features. Explored across visual mediums, theatre, music, poetry, and other creative outputs and from a range of lived experience and global academic, practitioner, artist, activist, government and prison service perspectives.

The symposium drew attention to the challenges faced by individuals participating in and delivering arts in criminal justice institutions, the internationalisation of prisoner arts, issues of access, visibility, and anonymity encountered by incarcerated and formerly incarcerated artists. As well as the prospects for the arts in criminal justice institutions, it also covered questions of advocacy and impact exchange in this area of work. To see our invited speakers and panel themes, see hereLink opens in a new window.

Previous Events

You can find out details of our past events that Captive Arts people were involved in.

Previous Events

Calendar

Check out the captive arts calendar for further information.

Captive Arts Calendar

Get further information about the captives art project.

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