Meet our latest Wow winner...

This month's Warwick Wow Award celebrates the Early Career Criminologists behind the HMP Long Lartin Course, for transforming lives behind bars through education. Want to say well done? Log in to congratulate our winning colleagues in the comments section at the bottom of the page.

HMP Long Lartin Course, Department of Sociology

Amid a busy teaching term, this small team volunteered their time, energy, and expertise to reach 12 men serving long sentences at HMP Long Lartin, a high-security Category A prison. Most of these men had never experienced formal education before.

The course gave the learners the opportunity to discuss and learn through their own lived experiences, develop critical thinking and express ideas creatively through poetry and art.

Transcript

Professor Stuart Croft Vice-Chancellor: All of our Wow winners are amazing and do fantastic things. But we have today a group of people who do something quite unique. A group of colleagues in the Department of Sociology—sociologists, criminologists—who have devised a course to engage prisoners in a high-security jail. To go in and to work with people, to educate and to help transform the lives of people who are on long sentences. It's an extraordinary piece of work.

And Anna, Sylvia, Ruth, Emily do incredible work in this space. The first course has been so successful that they're invited back to do a second. It's an amazing story. So let's go and hear from them.

Hello, hello, hello. Hello. People staring in absolute silence. I'm afraid this is one of those moments. It's a moment because you see what we do... Look at you all backing away. Absolutely marvelous. That was marvelous.

We have these things—they're called Wows and Wonders—and people get put forward for doing things above and beyond that are really unusual, really amazing, and that colleagues across the whole institution would really like to learn about and understand. Some of these amazing things.

And the— I have to get my false teeth in here— the Long Lartin team were nominated and are the winners for this, frankly, unbelievable work that you do. Some applause. Come on. Applause, applause everybody.

There's one certificate to go around, one certificate, but there is a thing called a photocopier. So you know, everybody can have something up. One certificate for you all. Thank you all so much.

But you know what's most important, don't you? What's most important is yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I collect you. I love that. That was... every day, pass it round. Yeah, every day you pass it round to somebody else to say thank you so much for that fantastic work.

Do you think? I do, don't you? Yeah. Applause coming everybody. Well done. Brilliant. Brilliant stuff.

The learners were so inspired that they created a podcast to reflect on the experience - speaking with passion about the content and their lecturers.

Several have since become peer mentors, enrolled in further study, and applied for distance-learning university courses. The prison has invited the Warwick team back for a second cohort this year.

Behind the scenes, this work demanded meticulous planning, long-distance travel in poor weather, complex security clearance, and balancing childcare - all while teaching in a challenging, unpredictable environment.

The team's nominator told us:

"These colleagues also inspired me with their enthusiasm and camaraderie, providing an example of how great it is to teach important subjects as a team and in solidarity."

This project is a shining example of what happens when academic passion meets social justice, as it brought life-changing education to a group often forgotten and overlooked by society.

Take a look at some of the course learners' artwork and poetry...

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