Write To Be Heard: supporting offender learning through creative writing

Write to be Heard is a grant-aided creative writing programme commissioned and funded by the National Offender Management Service (NOMS). Its main objectives were to encourage hard-to-reach offenders to engage with education and arts opportunities in prison, to introduce new and innovative organisations to prisons and to investigate how to create a support network to help arts organisations working in prisons improve the services they offer. Workshops were delivered in 28 prisons (the requirement was 25). They were extremely well received by prisons and prisoners. Writers new to prison contexts were successfully introduced to providing workshops. The competition attracted 265 entries, was adjudicated by ten readers and judges, awarded 66 prizes and broadcast 31 entries on National Prison Radio. Prisoners were involved in designing the publicity, piloting the questionnaire and broadcasting the final programmes. The project demonstrated that innovative teaching methods can work in prisons to encourage literacy development and communication amongst traditionally reluctant learner