The Research Project
Sarah Bartley’s AHRC Research, Development and Engagement Fellowship (ECR) Staging Justice: Documenting Histories and Investigating Interdisciplinarity in the work of Rideout is a two-year project, which critically explores the landscape of theatre practices in the criminal legal system in the UK, paying particular attention to the work of Rideout (Creative Arts for Rehabilitation). Since their founding, Rideout has maintained a unique focus on interdisciplinarity, exploring how performance can interact with other fields (music, dance, psychology, and architecture) to reflect on prison contexts and expand public understandings of justice. Given the cultural, social, and critical complexity of carceral sites, this fellowship investigates the potential of Rideout’s interdisciplinary practice as a model that enables engagement with divergent and shifting prison ecologies.
More broadly, the histories and distinctive creative practices of prison arts organisations in the UK are at risk of being lost if they are not documented. Theatre in prison practices are acutely transient, as the implicit ephemerality of performance is coupled with opaque systems of incarceration and a politically charged reticence of the prison service to publicise arts practices that take place in prisons. Rideout is one of a set of pioneering UK arts and criminal justice organisations established in the eighties and nineties that are still led by a founding member. Over the next decade many of these founders are likely to retire, prompting a seismic shift in arts criminal justice practice in the UK as a change of leadership at these foundational organisations, or their potential closure, alters the landscape of the sector. During this fellowship, I specifically focus on Rideout in order to develop research strategies that attend to this imminent period of change and address the potential erasure of particularly distinctive prison arts that accompany it.
Rideout (Creative Arts for Rehabilitation)
Rideout (Creative Arts for Rehabilitation) was established in 1999 in order to develop innovative, arts-based approaches to working with prisoners and staff within U.K. prisons. We’ve retained a special emphasis on working in the Midlands where the company is based. The prisons where we’ve worked most extensively are HMPYOI Swinfen Hall, HMP Birmingham and HMP Dovegate, each of which have hosted a number of programmes. This prison-bound work has additionally extended to encompass national issues of prison and criminal justice reform.
Since 2014 our portfolio has diversified to also include work with non-offending populations, especially autistic adults and/or adults with mild learning disabilities who live in the North Staffordshire region.
Dr Sarah Bartley
Sarah is a community arts practitioner and theatre scholar. She has over a decade of experience running creative projects with communities and continues to seek out new ways to collaborate with artists within and beyond the prison estate.
Sarah is a Senior Lecturer in Community Performance and Applied Theatre at the Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London. Her work explores the intersections of work, participation, and policy at play within socially engaged performance. Across her teaching, research, and practice Sarah is committed to finding creative ways to deploy performance in service to social justice.
You can contact Sarah here: Sarah.Bartley@cssd.ac.uk
Staging Justice 