Prison and Addiction: Conversation and Connection through Creativity
- Submitting institution
-
Nottingham Trent University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 45 - 968874
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
-
-
- Location
- -
- Brief description of type
- N/A
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month
- February
- Year
- 2019
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
A - Artistic Research Centre
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Selby’s research focuses on the role of representation and creative practice in shaping public perceptions around addiction and incarceration as well as the experiences of those directly affected by these. She is particularly interested in exploring the role of creative practices which intervene directly in spaces of physical and psychological confinement. This study focuses on the ways in which research-informed creative practices can challenge existing public opinion of addiction and incarceration and the extreme suffering it inflicts. The core of the methodology is developing an innovative and accessible approach to storytelling and networking around difficult and often stigmatised experiences of addiction and incarceration. It allows those excluded ‘others’ to represent themselves differently whilst guarding against a tendency to manipulate, commodify or re-appropriate such representations.
Platforms for making and talking were initially developed through residency and tour of mainland China looking at interconnections between porcelain and opiates. This has been further developed through conversations within prisons with DMU University and Soft touch Arts such as: murals painted while recording narratives. Selby’s online Instagram archive @bluebaglife with 19,800 followers is a key methodology accessible to all. Selby’s work builds on approaches of Alcoholics Anonymous, Dean Kelland and Edmund Clarke (artists in resident, HMP Grendon through IKON, Birmingham), D Hunter (working-class workshops, Lumpen Journal), Lady Unchained, Unchained Poetry (prison radio presenter and programming), Food Behind Bars.
Through a multidisciplinary art practice, the findings and materials have been assembled and tested in different innovative configurations including: solo exhibitions (Wing, Hong Kong; Outpost Gallery, Norwich) funded by The British Arts Council; Conference keynote, Counselling in Prisons Network, Durham University. Chapters in Publications: ‘In: Patricide: the end of a 60-year old mistake’, Nottingham Contemporary; ‘The interjection Calendar 005’, Montez Press; PRISON: A SURVIVAL GUIDE, edited by Carl Cattermole, published by Penguin Books.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -