Creating in Confinement: Co-production, Creative Methods and Carceral Geographies Workshop
Tuesday, 26 August 2025, 10:00 a.m. to 5 p.m.
University of Birmingham, UK, Room TBC.
Registration: https://events.humanitix.com/cgwg-workshop-creating-in-confinement
Workshop Overview
This workshop explores how creative practice and research enable novel forms of knowledge production in carceral settings. Providing researchers across career stages with opportunities to meet, share experiences and try out creative approaches for their own work, the workshop is open to all. The morning and afternoon sessions open with keynote speakers engaged in creative practices in carceral settings.
Keynote speakers
- Paula Harriot (Unlock)
- Laura Caulfield (Wolverhampton University)
- Maria Adams (Doing Porridge, University of Surrey)
Creativity in Practice
- Silhouettes that Speak: Mapping Emotions, Building Bonds. Facilitated by Karen Hoecker Pérez
- Arts & Abolitionist Futures. Facilitated by Ally Walsh
Celebrating Publications
- We will close the day with a celebration of recent publications in carceral geography and an informal social gathering.
Help us to Celebrate: Have you published or edited a book, article, or creative work, or been inspired by a publication by someone in the CGWG network over the last academic year? If so, please let us know using this form. Submit your suggestions by Fri. July 18, 2025.
Abstracts for Keynotes
Paula Harriot
Title: Working for Knowledge Equity in Co-Produced Research (TBC)
Abstract: Understanding epistemic injustice—where individuals or groups are discredited or excluded from knowledge production based on identity—reveals critical barriers to innovation and imagination. By privileging certain voices while silencing others, dominant epistemic structures restrict the diversity of perspectives essential to creative and transformative thinking. Embracing knowledge equity recognizes the value of lived experience, community wisdom, and non-traditional knowers, fostering richer and more inclusive innovation. Collaborative and co-produced methodologies are not only ethical but strategic; they create the conditions for generating new, socially relevant knowledge by creating space for communities oft positioned as research subjects to move to defining research topics and leading research processes
This approach is especially vital in fields laden with power and moral blindness such as criminal justice, where those with lived experience are often merely researched This presentation will draw on examples of methodologies and associated learning that can shift power dynamics, dismantle traditional hierarchies of expertise, and nurture a collective imagination. As society confronts complex global challenges, integrating knowledge equity into research and innovation processes is not optional—it is essential.
Bio: Paula Harriott is the current CEO of Unlock, a charity which advocates on behalf of—and offers support to—the c. 12 million people in the UK impacted by a criminal record. She is the co-host of the award-nominated podcast . She has previously worked as Head of Programmes at the groundbreaking charity User Voice, and as Head of Involvement at Revolving Doors Agency, as well as leading the development of the Prisoner Policy Network whilst Head of Prisoner Engagement at The Prison Reform Trust. She is the 2023 winner of the Perrie Award.
Publications:
Vannier M and Harriott P (2024) Prisoner Leaders: Leadership as Experience and Institution , Palgrave Macmillan.
Buck, G., Tomczak, P., Harriott, P., Page, R., Bradley, K., Nash, M., & Wainwright, L. (2023). Prisoners on prisons: Experiences of peer-delivered suicide prevention work, Incarceration: An international journal of imprisonment, detention and coercive confinement
Michaela Booth, & Paula Harriott. (2021). Service users being used: thoughts to the research community. In Critical Reflections on Women, Family, Crime and Justice (1st ed., pp. 199-). Policy Press.
Buck, G., Harriott, P., Ryan, K., Ryan, N., & Tomczak, P. (2021). All our justice: People with convictions and ‘participatory’ criminal justice. In The Routledge Handbook of Service User Involvement in Human Services Research and Education (1st ed., pp. 285–295). Routledge.
Arrondelle Donna, Ashe Stephen, Danica Riley, Paula Harriott, Fauzia Ahmad, Debbie Bargallie, Marc Conway, Dalton Harrison, Hannah Lewis, Kirsty Liddiard, Michael McCusker, Pradeep Narayanan, Esther Outram, Aisling Skeet, Lauren White (2024) Knowledge equity: a framework for critical reflection. Manual. National Centre for Research Methods.
Laura Caulfield
Title: Creative co-production in adult and youth justice: principles, practicalities, and exploring impact
Abstract: The significant arts and creative life within the adult and youth justice systems in the UK largely sits outside of statutory rehabilitation and education programmes. Much of the arts and creative provision is delivered by voluntary and community organisations, often commissioned by prisons and youth justice services as an ‘add on’ programme or intervention. In recent years there has, however, emerged exciting examples of creative approaches being co-designed with children and adults in contact with the CJS and implemented at a system, rather than intervention, level.
This talk will explore key real-world examples: from co-designing and embedding creative services in youth justice (Caulfield and Wilkinson, in press); to using creative co-design with adult men in prison to tackle ‘tricky’ issues (Gamman and Caulfield. 2023). Drawing on research and practice with youth justice teams and adult prisons, the talk will outline the rationale for creative co-design, practical challenges and lessons about implementation, and will conclude by exploring how we can understand and evidence the impact of working in this way.
Bio: Professor Laura Caulfield PhD is Director of the Institute for Community Research and Development at the University of Wolverhampton, United Kingdom. Laura is a psychologist whose research focuses on the impact of interventions in criminal justice, with a particular interest in the role of the arts. Laura is currently leading the evaluation of the West Midlands Violence Reduction Unit, funded by the Home Office.
Publications:
Caulfield L. & Hill J. (2025) Criminological Skills and Research for Beginners, 3rd Edition, Routledge.
Gardner A. & Caulfield L. (2024) Arts in Criminal Justice and Corrections: International perspectives on methods, journeys, and challenges, Routledge.
Maria Adams
Title: Spaces of Creativity in Women’s Prisons
Abstract: Making ‘spaces of creativity’ is an important part of undertaking research that can capture the voices of women incarcerated. The Doing Porridge project captured the voices of 108 women adopting a range of methods including observations, interviews, diaries and art workshops to understand the social role of food in women’s prison. In this presentation, we will seek to understand the importance of using art as a way of building connections in a space that can be deemed as challenging and hostile like the prison. Secondly, we will explore the way the use of art can create spaces that expand on understanding food in prison from a political, social and evocative ways. The last part of this presentation will share personal reflections in producing relationships and an intimate community between the research team and women whilst sharing a connection in ‘Doing Art’.
Bio: Maria Adams is an Associate Professor in Criminology at the University of Surrey. Her research specialises in women in prison, families, food and social identities. She is currently leading a project funded by the Economic Social Research Council on food in women’s prisons. This is a qualitative project capturing the voices of 108 women on exploring the preparation and consumption of food across four prisons. Alongside this, she is also leading a project funded by Nuffield Foundation on developing a parenting framework to strengthen the relationships between youth justice services and parents of young people affected by the YJS. Her work has been published in a range of journals in criminology, and she currently has two monographs out on the lived experiences of families affected by the criminal justice system.
Film on our findings: Doing Porridge: Food in Women’s Prisons
Workshop descriptions
Silhouettes that Speak: Mapping Emotions, Building Bonds
Facilitor: Karen Hoecker Pérez
Workshop Description: For the last five years, as part of the organisation Pájarx entre Púas, I have worked on the convergence of activism and research in prison geographies from Valparaíso, Chile. Through artistic workshops such as Body Mapping or Silhouettes, we have explored how creative practices can transform dynamics in prison contexts, favouring reflection and collective empowerment. This experience has allowed us to develop participatory and interdisciplinary approaches that contribute to the discussion on the impact of artistic work in prison environments, in lne with the proposal of the call and my participation in the session.
In this way, this session aims to present and experiment with a methodology used in workshops in prison contexts: Body Mapping or Silhouettes. This exercise invites deep reflection and encourages the strengthening of group bonds by focusing on bodies and emotions as axes of analysis. The dynamic consists of drawing a collective silhouette on a flipchart, personalising it according to the group’s interests and using it as a tool to answer questions distributed in different parts of the body.
In workshops carried out in prisons, this tool has been key to explore emotions, dreams, bonds and needs for expression. Its adaptability allows it to be adjusted to different environments and needs, which makes it an enriching resource both for reflecting on our work and for building sustainable strategies.
During the session, we will share how this methodology has been implemented in prisons in the past and together we will carry out an exercise adapted to the work of activists and researchers in prisons. This will allow participants to directly experience the process and reflect on how to apply this tool in their own contexts of action.
Some of the questions included: in the head, ‘What does it mean to me to be an activist or researcher from this space?’; in the mouth, ‘What does it urge me to say?’; in the heart, ‘What emotions emerge during fieldwork or activism?’; in the hands, ‘What are we building?’; and in the feet, ‘Where do I want to move forward from my activism or research?’. These questions seek to connect personal and collective experiences, offering a holistic perspective of the challenges and possibilities that arise when working in prison contexts and/or contexts of exclusion.
To conclude, each group will have the opportunity to present the creation of their silhouette to the whole group. This closure will allow the different perspectives and experiences addressed during the session to be shared, fostering an enriching and collaborative dialogue.
Bio: Karen is a geographer from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. Her Master of Geography degree from the same institution enabled her to articulate her abolitionist activism with feminist geography, an area of interest influenced by her involvement with the feminist foundation Pájarx entre Púas, an organisation dedicated to working with women in incarcerated and post-incarcerated contexts, where she collaborates within the project management team. Her work centres on territorial and socio-spatial studies from a gender perspective. Concurrently, she holds the position of research assistant on the Regular FONDECYT Project 1220508, entitled Gender violence in the intimate (ex-)partner relationship: Intersectionality, agencies and resistances. Furthermore, she serves as a member of the board of directors of the Feminist Association of Geographers of Chile.
Arts & Abolitionist Futures
Facilitator: Ally Walsh
Workshop Description: Arts & Abolitionist Futures engages with principles from transformative justice to highlight the work of partners Abolitionist Futures– a grassroots collective engaged in political education. At present, the collective is digitising the archive of The Abolitionist which was a 1980s journal by the Radical Alternative to Prison group. Throughout 2024, we invited communities in Leeds to explore abolitionist praxis through participatory visual arts workshops. As a collaborative group with the support of Abolitionist Futures, two students with lived experience of prison – Dalton Harrison and Phoenix Griffin – along with Ally Walsh, led workshops using archived editions of The Abolitionist as a starting point for discussions on continuities over time.
We worked with folks leaving prison, students, community members and activists to encounter issues and generate visual campaigns through collage, word art, creating postcards and posters. We then opened a call for artists to pitch a poster design to represent abolitionist themes. Our aims were to centre lived experience and generate capacity for imagining a world without prisons.
All welcome: The workshop builds on this approach, using collage, slogans, and collective creativity to explore everyday abolition by making a poster/ postcard.
· Personal connections and everyday experiences of punishment
· Understanding harm and accountability
· A small intro to abolitionist imagination
The workshop does not require any level of artistic practice, merely a willingness to take part in creative political education. This enables us to process and rehearse what we need for creative praxis in our movements. For more on the project see our RA Dalton’s blog.
The project was seed funded by Sapling – an initiative from the University of Leeds Cultural Institute and the Leeds Arts & Humanities Research Institute.
Bio: Ally Walsh is based at the University of Leeds, where she is Professor of Performance and Social Change. She is a scholar-activist who organises with South African & UK youth and former prisoners centred in abolitionist practice. With 20 years as a practitioner of prison theatre, arts activism and community performance, her research has been on state violence, protest and contemporary performance in Greece, SA and the UK.
Publications:
Walsh A. (2019) Prison Cultures: Performance, Resistance, Desire , Univ. of Chicago Press.
Tsilimpounidi M. & Walsh A. (2014) Remapping Crisis: A Guide to Athens, Zero Books.
Forthcoming book: Harm & repair in contemporary South African performance: Resisting injustice, Bloomsbury.
Additional Information & FAQ
Cost
There is no charge to attend. The workshop is generously funded by an RGS Research/Working Group grant and revenue from previous events. Those who wish to support this and future events may make a voluntary donation when registering.
Organisation
This workshop is organised by the Carceral Geographies Working Group independently from the Royal Geographical Society Annual Conference. Please direct all queries to Lauren Martin, Chair of the CGWG: lauren.martin@durham.ac.uk
Location
Room details will be shared with registered participants. We will be located on UoB’s central campus and near the RGS marquis. (Postcode B15 2TT)
The nearest train station with national rail service is University (Birmingham). Local bus service is available, as well. Both offer regular service to the university.
You can plan your rail journey using https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/ and book using https://www.thetrainline.com/
Timing
The workshop will run from 10am to 5pm with comfort breaks and a longer lunch break.
Suggested Dining Options
To keep the event free and low cost, the event will not be catered. Fear not! The venue is minutes away from breakfast, hot and cold beverages, lunch and evening drinks. We are therefore asking attendees to bring their own beverages and lunch. Those of you travelling by train will find multiple options between University Station and the venue. There is ample green space for eating in the fresh air, weather permitting!
If you staying in Birmingham for a few days have a look at this list with cafés and restaurants, community arts spaces, book stores, and other venues to visit in Birmingham. With thanks to Thomas Davies and Melanie Griffiths for suggestions: See here
Accommodation
The university is two train stops away from central Birmingham, which features a range of hotel and hostel options at all price points. You may search for options on booking.com, any travel website of your choosing. Budget options include: TraveLodge and Birmingham Backpackers Hostel.
Registration: https://events.humanitix.com/cgwg-workshop-creating-in-confinement
Organiser contacts:
Workshop organiser: Lauren Martin, lauren.martin@durham.ac.uk
Publication Celebration: Deirdre Conlon d.conlon@durham.ac.uk
Membership Information: https://carceralgeographies.co.uk/membership/