Music in time: An evaluation of a participatory creative music programme for older prisoners

This evaluation was developed as a research collaboration between the University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol and a Community Interest Company, Superact, which is affiliated with the south west regional branch of an arts charity, Live Music Now! The funding for the project was awarded by the former Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (the Transformation Fund) to support the development of a creative music educational programme for older prisoners. Superact CIC and Live Music Now! have extensive experience of delivering music education programmes for prisoners. UWE was invited to provide research expertise in terms of developing and conducting the evaluation. The evaluation took a formative, qualitative approach to enable the creative music programme provided by Superact CIC to be evaluated from the points of view of prisoners across a range of establishments in the south west of England. This report describes the aims and objectives of the evaluation, provides an overview of the context, describes the methodology and fieldwork processes and reports on the findings. It is hoped that the information in the report can help inform future developments of creative arts programmes in this field