Fine Cell Work is delighted to support The Arts Alliance. The organisation's mission is to create an enabling social and political environment for arts to be embodied in the criminal justice system.

Their vision, which we at Fine Cell Work share, is to enable the arts to be recognized as a means of reducing re-offending and therefore contributing to a safer, cohesive and inclusive society. The Arts Alliance recently attended both the Labour and Conservative party conferences and staged events where they made the case for rehabilitation in prison through theatre, poetry, music and art.

The line up at both the Brighton and Manchester events included Jonathan Aitken, Anthony Horowitz, Jo Brand Iain Dale and performances from ex-convicts. We were delighted that Fine Cell Work's patron Libby Purves attended the Ruby Lounge caberet event in Manchester and wrote about her support for organisations working to bring the arts to prisoners in her regular weekly column for The Times :

"It takes a lot to get me to a party conference. I am immune to their thrill. But needs must: last week I had five minutes’ ranting in a dank cellar in Brighton with battered Labourites; tonight the same in the Ruby Lounge in Manchester with Tories.

My brief moment is sandwiched between the performance poet Akiel Chinelo and an ex-prisoner called Jonny on the guitar. Around midnight Jonathan Aitken will spring from the wings to deliver his increasingly practised and passionate views on prison life; and less obviously, but encouragingly, the Shadow Attorney-General Ed Garnier promises to do a turn, after the children’s writer Anthony Horowitz.

In Brighton Jo Brand topped the bill (“Slightly disappointed to hear Gordon Brown has denied using drugs . . . was planning to try and buy some crack off him tonight.”) She was flanked by powerful playlets, a limerick, Denise Black from Coronation Street and an ex-prisoner called Eileen with heartbreaking songs by Holloway inmates.

Why such a rolling motley cabarets? Jack Straw, that’s why."

*The full article by Libby can be read at

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/libby_purves/article6860952.ece


Jonathan Aitken also speaks about the arts in prison and his experience as a former prisoner in an article for EPolitix.com

http://www.epolitix.com/latestnews/article-detail/newsarticle/aitken-backs-rehabilitation-through-the-arts/


More information about the Arts Alliance and their work can be found at http://artsalliance.org.uk/