HMP Warren Hill sits right next to the sea on the Suffolk coast and, in non-pandemic times, it buzzes all day long with activity and purpose.  The prison takes residents serving long-term sentences from the rest of the prison system and aims to prepare them for release.  They are out of their cells for 12 hours a day.   The Vestey Project and the music workshops run by Britten Pears Arts are two of many initiatives that are welcomed and facilitated by the prison.  



In this podcast we hear from Rebecca White, founding director of Your Own Place, and her mentee who, through sheer determination, has happily settled on the outside.  He’s doing voluntary work and is very articulate about the benefits of being mentored and the ‘enabling environment’ at HMP Warren Hill.  We also hear from Judy Dow, who is Head of Philanthropy at the Norfolk Community Foundation about her journey as a Vestey mentor.   I wasn't able to interview Judy's mentee for reasons that will be apparent by the end of the podcast.  The music was recorded by residents of the prison with Britten Pears Arts in 2019.   They've worked with the prison for many, many years and each series of music workshops ends in a concert which is open to family and friends. 

https://www.yourownplace.org.uk/get-involved/volunteer-mentoring-prisons/

https://snapemaltings.co.uk/criminal-justice/



Tags: #prisonerrehabilitation #mentoring #vesteyproject #yourownplace #enablingenvironment

Changing Lives 

Posh Bird...Rough Diamond

This is a soundscape from two weeks' travelling in Chile just after the start of the 18 October revolution.  They are all sounds recorded in the street, in bars, in Santiago, Valparaíso and the Atacama Desert.   I have put this out to mark the three month anniversary of the first demonstration.  The demonstrations continue with the recent burning down of the carabineros' church in Santiago.  President Piñera has promised constitutional change and a review of the pensions system.  Thank you to my friend Manuela for giving us her insight into events.  Listen to the howling dogs of the desert at the end.....

Street Art photographed in Bellavista, Santiago, Nov.2019

Chile Despertó...a soundscape

Music from 'The Pinnacle' in rehearsal and interviews with band members in their dressing-room after a performance at The South Bank in London.  Frank speaking about what music means to them on their journey through prison and now on the outside.  'Since 2012 the Irene Taylor Trust have been running their ‘through the gate’ programme, Sounding Out. The two year traineeship aims to provide longer-term rehabilitative opportunities to previous project participants in order to help bridge the gap between life inside and outside prison. Through a combination of live music performances and paid training placements participants are able to demonstrate on a very public platform the positivity, talent and creativity locked inside our prisons, challenging the often negative perceptions of people who have spent time in prison.' https://irenetaylortrust.com
Art installation by  Nam June Paik (1932-2006) 'the father of video art' seen at Tate Modern 2019

Through A Shattered Pane.  Ep. 2 of 'Changing Lives'

Darren has the charm of the Devil and Lorraine is the love of his life.  As I edited their story, I realised I was editing 'West Side Story' cut-and-pasted into the heart of East London.  It is a story of love... deep, abiding love, murder in self-defence and 28 years in prison with a life-defining ending. 

The song 'You and Me' was written by Darren for Lorraine after one visit when she was finding life particularly hard.  Performed by Darren and members of band, The Pinnacle, as part of the Sounding Out project with The Irene Taylor Trust.

Darren is now working with The Message helping advise and re-settle ex-offenders.

Photograph:  Nigel Henderson (1917-1985)
 'Gillian Alexander at play, Chisenhale Road c.1950'

Now My Love Be Strong   Episode 5 of 'Changing Lives'

These are three interviews with three remarkable people from my previous podcast who I caught up with to find out what their experience of the last few weeks has been as the corona virus has taken hold in the UK and the whole country is under lockdown.  The Breathe Music classes were cancelled two weeks ago and Elmi and Noel are in the strictest form of self-isolation and Linda, who has worked as a specialist respiratory nurse for 20 years, is about to join the team of hard-pressed staff working in intensive care.  She has volunteered for this post and I spoke to her on Monday evening after a day's training in how they are managing in daily changing circumstances on the front line.  Her description of a set of lungs that were examined post mortem will stay with me for the rest of my life.

Every Breath You Take...After

In September 2019, when most of us would hardly have been giving a thought to the functioning of our lungs, I went to record a singing session with Breathe Music in Essex.  It was a beautiful autumn day.  Children were playing in the playground outside the community hall.  Nobody had any idea what lay over the horizon.  This podcast comes in two parts...Before and After.    In the first we hear harpist Mary Anne Barclay who founded Breathe Music five years ago and Linda Leech, a nurse specialist in lung health who prescribes singing for her patients.   All the singers you hear here are under the strictest form of self isolation now and Linda is about to join the hard-pressed specialist nurses working in intensive care.  I catch up with them in the second part of this podcast.  Mary Anne's harp-playing weaves its way through the piece and I have deliberately left the ending unedited so you can experience the calm felt by the singers at the end of the session.  No more coughs...just peace and companionship.

 Mary Anne can be contacted at www.breathemusic.org.uk 

'Colchester Breathe Easy is a friendly support group for people suffering from lung conditions and their partners/carers. We hold monthly meetings in which we have guest speakers and refreshments. Membership is free.  All you have do is  fill in a registration form.'

'Once you become a member this entitles you to join our weekly Exercise [£2] and Singing {£3] sessions. We are always welcoming new members,  if you are interested please contact John Price at jprice73@hotmail.co.uk '

Every Breath You Take...Before

In the last week of February the wind blew me in to The Training Flat in Norwich where an eager group of young people were tucking into pizza, some chatting and laughing, some quiet and shy but all engaged.  This was a 3-day Tenancy and Independent Living Skills Plus (TILS+) training course to help set them up on their feet in the outside world.  The course is one of many invented and run by the social enterprise, Your Own Place, which was set up by Rebecca White in 2013 with the specific aim of preventing homelessness. They also have a network of mentors in the community who they train to support people leaving home or care and people approaching and after release from prison.  The team has suddenly, like every single social enterprise, or other business across the country, had to completely rethink how they operate under lockdown and how to reach all the people who need their support more than ever.  In this podcast we hear from CEO Rebecca, talented trainers, Jarrod and Jess, and past TILS+ trainee, Simon, who is now a member of their Youth Advisory Board... and last, but not least, a roomful of bright and lively young people who have all had many challenges in their lives.  www.yourownplace.org.uk

Piano:  Henrietta Faire
'Fantasie und Fuge A-moll' by Johann Sebastian Bach
'Vals Poético' by Enrique Granados

Your Own Place In The World

Many people are reinventing themselves under lockdown.  So, when an email popped into my inbox 10 days ago inviting me to 15 minutes of smiling, laughing and connecting to boost my immune system and lift my mood for the rest of day, I thought 'Yes...that's exactly what we ALL need' so I made a podcast about it.  Flora Wellesley Wesley is a dancer, choreographer, teacher and writer and sits on the council of Equity (choreographers' seat).  She is also a founder member of Nora, a contemporary dance ensemble who make highly original work constantly challenging boundaries.  In this podcast we hear pieces of Nora's work woven through Flora's laughter workshop and a sung portrait of her made for '52 portraits' at Sadler's Wells.

“When you laugh, you change and when you change the whole world changes around you.” – Dr Madan Kataria, medical doctor and founder of Laughter Yoga.

Daily classes are listed at www.florawellesleywesley.com.

'52 Portraits' is a digital project by choreographer Jonathan Burrows, composer Matteo Fargion and video maker Hugo Glendinning.  Flora's song was performed by Francesca Fargion.

'BLOODY NORA! 'Concept, writing, choreography and direction: Liz Aggiss  Music: Richard Strauss Also Sprach Zarathustra played by Portsmouth Sinfonia; Dead Belgian (by kind permission) Mazurka Limouson and Ne Me Quitte Pas; Johan Sebastian Bach Sheep May Safely Graze (Extract) and Prelude No. 5 in D; Alan Boorman/Wevie Hornpipe.

'Digging' Choreography: Simon Tanguy. Text: Eleanor Sikorski, Simon Tanguy and Flora Wellesley Wesley. Dramaturgy: Marzena Krzemińska.

Laugh Time with Flora

Albert Camus' philosophical novel, 'La Peste', is being read voraciously all over the world at the moment.  Written in 1947 it resonates with us today in a way Camus would probably never have imagined.  In this podcast we hear excerpts of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1957 in which he describes the role of the writer in a world under constant threat by malign forces.  As we make the first tentative steps to come out of lockdown and emerge into a world where we will be living with an ongoing pandemic for the foreseeable future, I asked three academics to look at the lessons we can take from and parallels we can see in plagues from the past, using 'La Peste' as a springboard.  This is a montage of their reflections which are diverse but complementary and their message, like Camus', is one of guarded optimism.  
 We hear from Professor Rosemary Lloyd, Fellow Emerita of Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, and Professor Emerita in French at Indiana University, Dr. Rowan Williams, Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and former Archbishop of Canterbury and Mark Bailey, Professor of Late Medieval History at the University of East Anglia and High Master of St. Paul's School.  Professor Bailey delivered the James Ford Lectures at Oxford University in 2019 on his specialist subject of thirty years, the Black Death, 'The End of Serfdom and The Rise of The West'.      

The excerpts from Camus' speech concerning the role of the writer translate as follows:
'Art, in my view, is not a solitary pleasure.  It is a means of stirring the greatest number of people by offering them a privileged picture of common joys and sufferings. It obliges the artist not to keep himself apart; it subjects him to the most humble and the most universal truth.' 
'..the nobility of our craft will always be rooted in two commitments, difficult to maintain: the refusal to lie about what one knows and the resistance to oppression.'
'..the silence of an unknown prisoner, abandoned to humiliations at the other end of the world, is enough to draw the writer out of his exile, at least whenever, in the midst of the privileges of freedom, he manages not to forget that silence, and to transmit it in order to make it resound by means of his art.' 
'Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself.' 
'Truth is mysterious, elusive, always to be conquered. Liberty is dangerous, as hard to live with as it is elating. We must march toward these two goals, painfully but resolutely, certain in advance of our failings on so long a road.'

The full speech is available on the Nobel Prize website at https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1957/camus/speech/
With many thanks to the Nobel Prize organisation for the use of excerpts of Albert Camus' speech and the photograph from their archive.
Many thanks to Ian Claussen, freelance existentialist, for translating and reading the passage at the beginning of the podcast from 'La Peste' and to the Estate of Albert Camus for allowing use of this extract.
Piano: Tamás Vásáry playing Frédéric Chopin's 'Nocturne Op. 09 Andante in E flat major' (Internet Archive)

Meditations On The Plague Ep. 10 of 'Changing Lives'

(This is the last episode of Series 1 of 'Changing Lives'.  Series 2 will start in September 2020)
Children across the world are being taught in a myriad different ways at the moment.  Schools are having to reinvent the very nature of schooling.  Some are relishing the opportunity and encouraging their teachers to be as creative as possible and some are not.  This is one young teacher's story.

I include a few short clips from an interview with the Head of OFSTED (the Office for Standards in Education in the UK), Amanda Spielman, with presenter Nick Robinson on BBC Radio 4's morning news programme 'Today' last week.

Miss Bayley's Geography Class

Podcast 'Changing Lives' launching 2020.  An audio plunge into the everyday lives of extraordinary people....thank you, extraordinary people...

Changing Lives Podcast

Popular tracks