Timing Out: Creative Reflections on Prison Life

Timing Out: Creative Reflections on Prison Life 

This exhibition presents visual art and poetry created by men serving very long sentences in a high-security prison in England. Researchers from the Department of Sociology and School of Law at Warwick engaged with these men in the context of an education programme delivered at the prison.

The exhibition’s theme, “Timing Out: Creative Reflections on Prison Life” considers how life unfolds within constrained horizons of time and within controlled spaces. What does it mean to move through major stages of life - youth, adulthood, and old age - while in custody, when imprisonment disrupts the typical markers of work, education, family, and community? How does growing up or growing older behind bars reshape one’s sense of self, perception of time and their sense of belonging?

The exhibition also challenges the assumption that prison time is either wasted or straightforwardly ‘constructive.’ While policy often frames education, work and rehabilitation as central to prison life, in practice - especially in Category A prisons - opportunities for learning, creativity, and personal and purposeful development are rare and have recently been severely underfunded. All this raises questions about the complex relationship between punishment – time – and justice.

Through these artworks, viewers are invited to reflect on what it means to pass time inside; to imagine a life lived within the confines of prison’s contained spaces and its regimented and controlled temporal dimensions.

About the Project:

This project is part of ongoing work by the Violence and Social Justice Research Cluster in the Department of Sociology. The creation of the exhibition is part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science 2025, organised and curated by Ruth Bernatek, Silvia Gomes, Emily Gray and Anastasia Chamberlen