Taking Stock of The Field: 50 Years of Performance and Prison

Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama, University of Manchester 

16 June 2025 – 17 June 2025

There has been little attention paid to the histories and historicisation of performance in carceral contexts. Taking as its starting point the formation of Stirrabout Theatre in 1974, Taking Stock of the Field is a gathering of practitioners, scholars, prison staff, and people with lived experience of the criminal justice system to reflect on the practices, politics and practicalities of making performance in the criminal justice system over the last 50 years in Britain. We believe taking the opportunity to looking to the past will be valuable for those who will shape the future of the field.

The event will draw on different panel formats, performances, and participatory exercises. Alongside this, we will be inviting attendees to co-create a historiography of the field with us throughout the conference. We are hosting the event in both prison and university settings to include as wide a range of constituents as possible.  

Taking Stock of the Field is co-curated by Sarah Bartley, Saul Hewish and Simon Ruding, as part of the AHRC funded Fellowship ‘Staging Justice’.

Draft Programme

16 June: 12.30-17.30 (inclusive of travel time)

Day one will consist of an afternoon of performance sharing and collaborative reflection at HMP Buckley Hall. 

We will ask for £10 contribution from attendees towards the cost of travel from the university to the prison. 

17 June: 9.30-17.30: 

Panels and dialogues focusing on: 

• The changing landscape of theatre and criminal justice
• The relationship between the academy and artistic practice in this field
• New approaches and orthodoxies in arts and criminal justice
• Public understandings of performance in carceral contexts
• The next fifty years of performance in prisons

Confirmed Speakers: John Bergman, Jenny Hughes, Jason York, Sarah Mullan, Caoimhe McAvinchey, Anna Herrmann; Aylwyn Walsh, Dalton Harrison; Steve Scott-Bottoms, Andy Watson, Saul Hewish, Keith Palmer, Jason Warr, Ambreen Razia, Esther Baker,  Jess Thorpe, Shona Babayemi, Tony Cealy, Simon Ruding, Sarah Bartley. 

Attending the Event

Sign up here: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/staging-justice/taking-stock-of-the-field-50-years-of-performance-and-prison/e-kzxxoq

For those attending Day 1 at HMP Buckley Hall we will meet in Manchester and need to travel to the prison together. You will need to bring photographic identification. If you want to attend both days, please sign up to the two day event option. 

Attendees are welcome to join for Day 2 only, which is at the University of Manchester, please sign up to the one day event option.

 

Punishment Acts: Tales of Retribution, Reparation and Redemption

@ B arts, Stoke, 9-17 April 2025

Nights are long in prison. The minutes drag by for both the watched and the watchers like a dirty mop on a dirty floor. Tales are told, secrets shared, rumours whispering under the doors, down the pipes, leaking through the locks. In that hinterland between sleep and wakefulness, the timeline of history buckles and twists as the past and present begin their endless dance: the smell of a vape, the splash of the slop out, the taste of gruel, the ache of the treadwheel, the creak of the hangman’s rope.

The nights are long in prison for those who are out of time. How long is long enough?

Punishment Acts draws on the ideas of people with lived experience of multiple disadvantage including custody. Made following a series of workshops with Expert Citizens exploring themes in Discipline and Punish by the French philosopher Michel Foucault, it will ask audiences to reflect on beliefs about punishment and consider whether there are other ways to achieve ‘justice’.

Suitable for audiences 15+

Punishment Acts is a co production between Rideout (Creative Arts for Rehabilitation) and B arts, working in association with Expert Citizens.

Rideout is an arts organisation that specialises in work in the criminal justice system, especially prison. Established in 1999, the company has a reputation for facilitating exciting and innovative arts projects that enable people in prison to explore new perspectives on themselves and others, alongside public facing work that challenges audiences to consider the form and fuction of prison.

B arts is one of the country’s longest running community and participatory arts organisations. Established in 1985 the company produces high quality arts experiences with people from many different backgrounds who would not normally engage with the arts. They aim to strengthen the cultural infrastructure in our area; increase the diversity and range of artists and producers working in the region, and offer quality and depth of engagement in the arts to all.

Expert Citizens is a Community Interest Company led by people with lived experience of homelessness, mental ill-health, addiction, domestic abuse, poverty or histories of offending behaviour. They specialise both in supporting others with lived experience alongside partnership work with statutory and voluntary sector organisations across Stoke-on-Trent to help reduce barriers to participation.