Read on to discover how music is helping prisoners to give up a life of crime and encouraging rehabilitation...
Music for prisoners... a means of redemption
There is a scene in the musical Made in Dagenham where a line of chorus girls in silver mini-dresses dances for the glamorous launch of the Ford Cortina Mark Two (helpfully singing, ‘It’s like a Mark One, only fract-ion-al-ly shorter’). Yet later, the heroine Rita returns home to find her husband Eddie gone, heartbroken by her absence while she is out campaigning for equal pay for women. She reads the letter he has left, as he sings: ‘But I can’t do this on my own / No more / And I need you round / Or else what is this all for?’
The highs and lows of a musical plot are even more keenly felt when performed in prison. In March of this year, 17 women prisoners starred alongside six professional singers from Pimlico Opera in a production of Made in Dagenham at HMP Bronzefield in Surrey, with more prisoners in backstage roles. The prison’s gym became a theatre, complete with tiered seating, a 12-piece band, half a Ford Cortina and tickets for up to £65. The Times’s classical music critic wrote of the self-funded £200,000 show that he had ‘never seen a prison production’ on such scale.
For prisoners, music provides confidence... and fosters discipline, patience and focus
The 17 newcomers made a good fit for the cast of feisty, sweary factory workers standing up to their bosses’ belittling. Biographies in the programme detailed several musical backgrounds, and other women who had aspired to learn. When prison director Charlotte Wilson addressed the audience after the cast had left the stage, she was barely audible above the whoops and cheers coming from off-stage.
West End singer Jodie Jacobs, who played Rita, reflects: ‘The girls said it helped their confidence,’ and it uncovered talents they didn’t know they had, such as making ‘an entire audience of 200-plus people laugh’. Musical director Bethany Reeves says the five weeks of rehearsing demanded discipline, patience and focus of the women, and respect for ‘everyone in the room, not only the professionals’. She adds that Eddie’s song reduced a cast member to tears. ‘She could relate to the song so much… she hasn’t seen her husband for eight years,’ Jacobs adds. ‘Most of the women have children; some had children who had died while they were in prison; some had all their kids taken away from them.’
Music for prisoners... Pimlico Opera
Pimlico Opera’s productions are probably the highest profile music projects going on in Britain’s prisons. But behind bars, musicians and volunteers are offering inmates a lively diversity of music projects, from musicals to choral music, from rap to ‘dad rock’. Those who lead them stress how they make inmates feel happier, calmer, more confident and ultimately more receptive to making the changes needed to ensure this spell in prison is their last.
This is no mean feat. The education and training that can aid rehabilitation are in short supply, meaning reoffending rates are high. And music projects have faced successive funding challenges. Projects are funded either by the prisons or by charities that are supported by individuals, trusts or bodies such as Arts Council England, which recognises that ‘creative and cultural experiences can be powerfully transformative for people in the criminal justice system, and the people around them.’
Funding cuts threaten music programmes for prisoners
However, Edward Smyth, head of development at the Prison Reform Trust and chair of prison charity Sing Inside, says, ‘Lots of trusts and foundations are either winding up their giving or reconsidering their priorities.’ Some projects have had to downsize, others to close, such as the Britten Sinfonia’s work in HMP Whitemoor in Cambridgeshire in 2023.
Made in Dagenham’s funding came from ticket sales, charitable trusts and ‘kind individuals’, explains Pimlico Opera CEO Wasfi Kani. But a drop in income post-Covid has led to the company switching from annual to biennial performances, with workshops in between. Ironically, Reeves says this ‘increases the longevity of the positive impacts’ of their work.
Music for prisoners... Bristol's Changing Tunes
The Bristol-based charity Changing Tunes is having to rethink its funding after losing many of its contracts with prisons after Christmas. The charity, which employs 25 people, runs projects in the South and South West of England, going into the same prison weekly and teaching groups of eight to ten people to sing, or to play drums, bass guitar, drill, trap or classic rock. Music enables participants to process difficult emotions constructively, says the charity’s senior musician in residence Simon Torrance, making it ‘a fantastic outlet’.
However, the charity is having to think on its feet. CEO David Jones says Changing Tunes receives some funding from grants – until five or six years ago the charity relied on grants from trusts and individuals – and will approach businesses. Involving businesses in rehabilitation is important, Jones explains, because many inmates – many with ‘great skills’ – want to work when they are released.
Allowing prisoners to stay in touch cuts reoffending rates
Changing Tunes offers its participants the opportunity to stay in touch after their release. Torrance runs monthly rehearsal sessions and performances, and the charity has a record label so prison leavers can release tracks they write. The charity says that re-offending rates of those who engage with them – admittedly self-selecting – is only five per cent. ‘Thinking of my post-release guys,’ reflects Torrance, ‘there’s a real kind of family and empathy; there’s encouragement that helps them to succeed rather than fail.’
A singer he has known for more than 10 years, including for the last three or four of his time inside, now ‘releases his own music, plays at our concerts quite regularly’ and supports Changing Tunes’s sessions for other prison leavers. ‘We walked with him through some really tough times,’ says Torrance .‘He’s been suicidal. And he’s phoned me up and we chat through stuff. So, it’s not just music; it’s support as well.’
Music for prisoners... Liberty Choir
Relationships are also key for fellow charity Liberty Choir. Bolstered by growing infrastructure and an impressive network of supporters, the charity has been running prison choirs for 11 years and is now in ten institutions in London and the South. It receives regular grants from Arts Council England, some from trusts, and says its individual ‘givers are growing with us’. Like Changing Tunes, it is also beginning to approach corporates.
‘We’re cussed women and we never give up,’ laughs co-founder MJ Paranzino. Having some friends in high places also helps: Liberty Choir’s patrons are Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour and Cherie Blair KC, and among its ambassadors are actor Jenny Agutter and Spectator editor and former government minister Michael Gove. Choirmaster Gareth Malone turned to Paranzino for a 2020 episode of BBC2’s The Choir when he was struggling to inspire young offenders in HMP Aylesbury.
Ongoing support for prison 'graduates'
Liberty Choir draws on a pool of music directors and 180-odd volunteers who are happy to chat with inmates and share their enjoyment of singing. Co-founder Ginny Dougary says that as you get to know the inmates, ‘you bond with them’. A favourite, even more popular than hits such as The Four Tops’ ‘I’ll Be There’, is the opening of Vivaldi’s Gloria (in Latin): just the bass part, intoned under the Red Priest’s energising, shimmering string writing (albeit played on an electric keyboard).
Crucially, Liberty Choir offers prison leavers, whom it calls ‘graduates’, one of four community choirs to join once they are released. Paranzino runs four in London and the South. Dougary adds: ‘The three stepping stones to successful rehabilitation are family, home and employment, so we aim to offer alternative or additional family, and we run a graduate employment scheme.’ Among the volunteers are lawyers and social workers who offer support and advice. Paranzino and Dougary are in touch with about 110 graduates; one is now a manager at an Aldi store, Dougary adds proudly.
Music helps prisoners stick to the straight and narrow
Some of the graduates want to give back to the choir. Vicky Bell and her husband Ross, an Iraq veteran who served time in HMP Wandsworth in 2014, have raised £40,000 through concerts given by his band Rosko Piko. His talents were discovered at Liberty Choir in Wandsworth, and he is now also mentoring a new graduate.
Liberty Choir’s latest trustees’ report says that re-offending rates among graduates it is in contact with is 2.8 per cent, and estimates that the choir has saved the taxpayer more than £8m. The financial argument for rehabilitation is important at a time when money and public sympathy are in short supply. Torrance believes there has been a hardening of public opinion against prisoners but says, at their concerts, the audience may not know ‘who’s an offender and who isn’t’. Concerts by offenders and ex-offenders challenge an us-and-them view of prisoners by showing them as musicians expressing themselves constructively.
Music for prisoners... a lifeline to confidence, aspiration and supportive relationships
So, music has continued in prisons where projects have had broad support, determined fundraisers and friends in high places to help them weather financial storms. A large project such as Made in Dagenham fosters valuable life skills such as self-discipline, patience and respect for others. Smaller-scale group music can also boost mood, confidence and ultimately aspiration.
One chance to play the piano in a chapel service transformed Edward Smyth’s 18 weeks in prison. He recalls: ‘For three or four minutes of each hymn, I could not be aware that I was in prison. It was a way of remembering that I was a human with interests, skills and passions. That seed grew my interest in music provision in prisons.’ One cast member from HMP Bronzefield wrote: ‘Participating in this play, Pimlico has shown me a path to change.’
The lifeline is not only the music, but the supportive relationships that develop around it, and the asociated employment opportunities. Surely the patchwork of projects on offer can only strengthen efforts to prevent prison leavers from falling back into crime, which is good for them and everyone around them.