“Keep well, keep hopeful, keep connected” – how universities can support prisons during Covid-19
In this blog, we hear from Learning Together and Rowan Mackenzie about how they have adapted their work to meet the challenges of the lockdown.
We feature the latest news about our work and share views from our staff and other prison education experts.
Making Links in Brazil and Argentina
In this blog post we hear from Sacha Darke, a senior lecturer at University of Westminster, who recently travelled to South America to visit existing and developing higher education prison initiatives.
“Education can be an effective link to keeping families together”
In this post, Professor Tom Schuller, Chair of PLA, talks about the importance of developing partnerships between prisons and further education colleges and of continued learning through adulthood.
“For some patients, education may be one of the few therapies they engage with”
The John Howard Centre is a medium-secure forensic hospital for adults. In this post, Miles Mantle talks about the meaning patients find in education and its rehabilitative effects.
“I couldn’t imagine my life without it”
Rowan Mackenzie is a PhD Researcher at University of Birmingham and since early 2018 has been helping to bring Shakespeare behind bars at a number of prisons. Today we hear from Rowan and from the Gallowfield Players, a theatre company at HMP Gartree
Roots to STEM: bringing science education to prisons
Space, coding and the science of sleep were all part of the equation at the PUPiL network’s latest event, as we heard from experimental projects that push the boundaries of what is usually possible in prisons.
Bringing Cell Block Science to HMP Leicester
The University of Leicester’s Dr Marie Nugent has worked with researchers and HMP Leicester to run an English pilot of Cell Block Science – a ground-breaking public engagement programme that brings STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) academics into prisons.
The Open University at 50: “We recognise the need to play to our strengths”
This year the OU turns 50, and to celebrate we asked Ruth McFarlane to share just a snapshot of some of the brilliant opportunities that the OU offer across the secure estate.
“What if I couldn’t cope if I found out what someone had done?”
As part of a partnership between Lincoln College and HMP Lincoln, Leasha Pridmore, a student studying Art and Design Foundation, has spent a semester running art workshops in the prison.
“Prison leavers help make our universities diverse and inclusive”
The PUPiL widening participation event in November 2018 highlighted the positive effects that university-prison partnerships can have, with speakers from Unlock and the University of Westminster.