UnComms is a new approach to facilitate groups to exchange and produce ideas developed as part of the Staging Justice project. This format is interested in:

• how ideas flow through, into, and out of institutions;
• how the structures and rules of institutions shape the forms of communication and knowledge available within them;
• Who prescribed modes of communication give power to

UnComms uses the tools, forms, and processes of communication common in the institution where the exchange is located to frame and structure the exchange of ideas.

In doing so, this approach invites us to repurpose and reform these modes of exchange for our own ends (whoever we are and whatever our ends are in this moment). 

For the Staging Justice project, the institution is the prison estate, consequently our exchange will be framed by the tools, forms, and processes that shape communication in this context (e.g. Letters; Applications; Compacts; Canteen Sheets; Behaviour / Personal Records; Phonecalls).

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For the the creative residencies of the Staging Justice Project the exchange will be structured as follows:

Preparation:

• Academics will be invited to write a short letter to workshop participants about their research and its relationship to the themes of the project. The letter can be up to 700 words and should be sent via email to Sarah.

• Workshop Participants will create documentation of the first week of activity to be shared with participating academics.

• Each academic will be invited to prep a 5-minute talk on their research relevant to the focus of the project.

In the research sharing:

• We will consider how academic responses to the performance might be captured.

• We will return to the letters + report shared prior to the session together and reflect on what this allowed us to communicate.

• We will experiment with different approaches to sharing knowledge in prison using the 5 minute research talk + participants experience of the process to share knowledge in these different ways.

This approach is inspired by the work of many scholars and artists who have been interested in finding new ways to facilitate exchanges that resist existing hierarchies and explore new routes for sharing knowledge (including Lois Weaver, Rajni Shah, Devoted and Disgruntled, Harrison Owen).