Art students at Isis Prison and Young Offenders Institute have picked up an impressive 13 prizes at this year’s prestigious Koestler Awards for offenders, secure patients and detainees.
One of the winning works, a pastel image called Lion Heart, is now on show at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall in London as part of this year’s ‘Strength and Vulnerability Bunker’ – the Koestler Trust’s annual national arts showcase.
The award winners, who earned cash prizes of up to £100, were selected from more than 7,000 entries and were judged by a panel of experts including Turner Prize-winning ceramic artist Grayson Perry and celebrated Young British Artist Sarah Lucas.
Young male prisoners from the Thamesmead Category-C training prison for under 25s and YOI submitted works including poetry, hip hop and grime, digital imagery and hairstyling.
Paul Marriott, Education, Vocation and Training course director of A4e at Isis said: “We have been open three years and each year we have attempted to inspire our learners to create and use the media available to them to focus their skills and talents.
“For these young men, having this as a motivational tool gives them and staff here at ISIS the inspiration to think positive, support and work hard to see more achieve and more awards won. So thanks to all the staff involved and congratulations to our learners who did gain recognition from the Koestler 2013 Awards.”
Public service provider A4e delivers the Offender Learning and Skills Service (OLASS) at Isis and 23 other prisons around Greater London and the East of England.
The Koestler Trust has been running its celebrated awards programme for 51 years. It aims to encourage offenders to express their energies and emotions through art, develop new skills and to see their achievements recognised by celebrated artists and the thousands of art lovers who flock to the exhibition every year.
Vikki Elliott, Deputy Director of Outreach and Involvement at the Koestler Trust said: “This year we invited Mercury Prize-winning rapper Speech Debelle to curate the exhibition which she has entitled ‘The Strength and Vulnerability Bunker’. It contains 190 entries to the awards across the different art forms. The atmospheric bunker is filled with images, objects, sounds and films that reveal personal reflections, regrets and hopes which Speech feels should be preserved as testament to the importance of human creation.”
Winners also have a chance to sell their art, with the money divided between the Victims Trust, the Koestler Trust and the artist. Any monies won are credited to a prisoner’s private cash, held by the governor.