In the Open: Art, academies and second chances

In a regular column, Nick London describes life in open conditions

Long-standing readers may remember that before coming to HMP Sudbury I served time in what is often described as the only genuinely therapeutic prison in Europe: HMP Grendon. I wrote about that experience in an Inside Time column titled A Journey Through the Therapy Looking Glass, reflecting on life in a community where the work of change is taken seriously every day.

Much of the growth I’ve achieved over the years I credit to the dedication of staff and fellow community members. Equally important was the time I spent working alongside resident artists on the programme run by Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery. With support from the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust, Ikon transformed an old outbuilding at Grendon into a working studio and established the only art gallery inside a UK prison.

For someone trying to understand himself through therapy, access to that kind of creative environment was transformative. Most of my time was spent working with artist Dean Kelland. I learned a range of artistic practices, from drawing and printmaking to performance and installation, but the technical skills were only part of what I gained. More importantly, Dean and other artists taught me to see the world differently. Therapy helped me look inward; art helped me to look outward. And my world became richer for it.

Although I spent five years at Grendon, my formal therapy ended after four. The final year became a frustrating limbo while I waited for a parole hearing that was ultimately delayed by 12 months. Without Ikon, I suspect I would have struggled badly.

Instead, my involvement deepened. I co-curated Kelland’s end-of-tenure exhibition and wrote an essay for its catalogue. Later, I helped curate an exhibition by artist James Lomax at Grendon and contributed writing for one of his London shows. Unexpectedly, the delay to my parole created opportunities that would otherwise never have existed.

Two years later, I find myself in a familiar position. My parole hearing is again approaching, again a year late. Yet, just as before, Ikon arrived with an extraordinary opportunity.

This time I would be curating an exhibition called TV Pain at Ikon’s gallery in Birmingham by Zubair, an artist serving a sentence at Agder Prison in Norway. Zubair was a student for three years at Agder Kunsakademi, which was a full-time, artist-run art academy built and operating within the walls of the high-security prison. 

The project formed part of a year-long exchange, linking prison-based art academies in the UK and Norway. This month Lomax is recreating at Agder the workshop he previously delivered at Grendon and, for me, it meant the opportunity to work again with both Lomax and James Latunji-Cockbill, the Ikon producer who leads programmes at Grendon and other UK prisons.

I know what it feels like when your world shrinks to the size of a cell. I also know how therapy and creative work can expand it again.

During my years at Grendon, they all saw me at my most uncertain, and encouraged me into roles – writer, artist, curator and collaborator – that I never imagined possible when I first entered a therapeutic community. Being with them again, this time outside prison walls, left me with a huge sense of validation. 

I may give Sudbury a hard time when criticism is deserved, but credit where it’s due. Not every open prison would feel comfortable allowing a resident to travel to Birmingham and curate an exhibition involving the public and international partners. Yet opportunities like this demonstrate what people in prison can achieve when given trust and responsibility.

Curating Zubair’s work has been only one aspect of the project’s significance. It has also opened an ongoing dialogue between him, me, and artists and curators from these prisoner-led academies in the UK and Norway. Because Zubair remains in custody, he was not able to attend the exhibition launch in June. Nevertheless, his work was represented by members of the wider collective behind the academy at Agder.

As part of Healing Arts Birmingham festival week, also in June, I joined curator Kristine Jærn Pilgaard and artist Thora Dolven Balke in a symposium at the Library of Birmingham. We were there to discuss TV Pain, and our collective experience of the huge benefits these projects offer. As we would be holding this conversation publicly, I must admit to a certain amount of trepidation. I needn’t have worried, as it was just a lovely, relaxed conversation. 

It made me reflect on how far Ikon has come with its prison arts project. When I first encountered them, they were operating out of a broom cupboard in Grendon. Now here we all were discussing international exchanges, academy-level education behind prison walls, and exhibitions that present prisoner artists as peers rather than curiosities. 

I know what it feels like when your world shrinks to the size of a cell. I also know how therapy and creative work can expand it again. Standing in Ikon Gallery, looking at Zubair’s incredible, transformed televisions and knowing the art was created inside another prison, I could see how prisons can become places of connection rather than simply containment. 

Parole, when it finally arrives, will not resolve every challenge. The outside world remains complicated in ways prison rarely prepares us for. But projects like these – art academies in prisons and exhibitions that cross borders – offer something invaluable: the opportunity to practise living differently while still inside, and to carry those lessons beyond the prison gate.