Inspiring Futures: Footprints

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The transformative potential of the arts for men and women in the criminal justice system is well-known to those working in the field yet there are significant challenges to capturing fully and systematically the multiple effects of arts participation. The ability to demonstrate impact is critical for arts organisations whose income is dependent on grants and commissions, particularly in a time of economic austerity. Many existing impact studies have been small-scale evaluations of individual projects in single arts disciplines with short follow-up timescales. Their findings frequently point to positive short-term effects but less is known about the collective and distinct contribution of the arts in criminal justice in the longer-term, for example, to social integration after imprisonment, to desistance from crime, and more broadly to quality of life and the artistic community. There are also important questions about what constitutes robust evidence of arts impact and about the relationship between arts practice and research evaluation. These are the issues that this project will address. The University of Cambridge and the National Criminal Justice Arts Alliance (NCJAA) will work in partnership with 8 organisations from different arts disciplines which engage with different groups of offenders and ex-offenders in prison and in the community across the UK: Geese Theatre; Clean Break; Good Vibrations; Only Connect; Synergy; The Irene Taylor Trust; Open Clasp; Helix Arts, and the Koestler Trust. Through this collaboration, this project will develop a theoretically informed understanding of the contribution of the performing arts in criminal justice and a technically innovative and sustainable participatory evaluation research methodology. Through these activities it aims to facilitate the expansion and embedding of arts initiatives in criminal justice settings and realise the beneficial potential of the arts for people in the criminal justice system.