Shakespeare in Shackles: Pedagogical Experiment and Cultural Activity in a French Prison

Christine Evain,Spencer Hawkridge,Delphine Saurier

doi:10.11114/ijsss.v6i3.2972

Abstract

As cultural activities in prisons expand, institutions are recognizing the need for research on impact in order to optimize these activities. In this article, our team presents findings on a recent teaching experiment concerning literature workshops that brought together male inmates and university students over an 18-month period at the Centre de Détention de Nantes in France. Our qualitative approach explores an ethical question: What are our responsibilities towards all the parties involved in this teaching experiment? Two important and apparently conflicting findings come to the fore. First, the responsibility of teachers is to accompany the desires of students and inmates in their permanent negotiation with the apparatus itself. Second, workshop organizers need to reflect on their own responsibility concerning the way the workshop contributes to the institutionalization of the prison.

Highlights

1.1 Introduce the ProblemThere has been rising enthusiasm among cultural institutions about collaborating with penal institutions to take cultural activities into prisons
Sociologists seeking to understand the impact of these cultural activities (Note 1) on inmates are confronted with numerous questions: how do inmates respond when they are given access to cultural activities? How do we measure the impact of such activities? How can this be achieved within the context of national institutions and penal legislation? An increasing amount of research in different countries has pointed to the benefits of cultural initiatives in prisons, e.g., USA (Brewster, 2014; Cohen, 2009), (Gussak, 2007), UK (Clements, 2004), (Tett, Anderson, McNeill, Overy, & Sparks, 2012), Japan (Weschler, Brown, & Kimzey, 1995), Africa (Schrift, 2006)
Our research methodology is designed to test our hypothesis articulated around the following three points: 1. Our workshop is, in accordance with Foucault’s apparatus term, an ‘amalgam’ which involves the contribution of all participants: every partner plays a role in the co-construction of the literature workshop system

Summary

Introduction

1.1 Introduce the ProblemThere has been rising enthusiasm among cultural institutions about collaborating with penal institutions to take cultural activities into prisons. An increasing amount of research in different countries has pointed to the benefits of cultural initiatives in prisons, e.g., USA (Brewster, 2014; Cohen, 2009), (Gussak, 2007), UK (Clements, 2004), (Tett, Anderson, McNeill, Overy, & Sparks, 2012), Japan (Weschler, Brown, & Kimzey, 1995), Africa (Schrift, 2006) As such activities in prisons expand, especially artistic activities, institutions are recognizing the need for research on the impact in order to optimize them in a responsible manner. It is inspired by the cultural workshop program the authors conducted in a prison that enacts their own sense of social and psychological responsibility towards workshop participants These workshops encourage interaction between inmates and university students by taking the latter into prison cultural activities that centre on exploring literature. The question of responsibility is twofold: what are the teachers’ responsibilities in relation to both the inmates and the university students? What kind of pedagogical framework best addresses this question of responsibility?

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion