Inside Stories

This article critically examines the participatory visual arts project, Inside Stories. Developed by artist Alexa Wright with participants at three UK prisons (HMP Liverpool, HMP Styal, and Feltham Young Offenders Institute YOI) between 2021 and 2023, the project was designed around the creation of a co-authored video diptych for external audiences. Through collage, photography, and collaboratively directed video production, incarcerated participants explored personal narratives in response to keywords such as Justice, Power, Responsibility, and Freedom. Constantly negotiating institutional constraints, we attempted to render the carceral boundary less opaque through the transport of participant narratives and imagery between “inside” and “outside,” while also offering participants agency and maintaining aesthetic integrity. Reflecting on co-creation as a form of artistic research, we highlight some of the questions that arose during the development of this co-authored artwork in the very particular environment of UK prisons during and after the COVID pandemic. Beginning with a descriptive introduction, we situate the project within the theoretical context of the process versus product debate initiated by Grant Kester and Claire Bishop in the early 2000s. We then go on to interrogate and evaluate the aims, challenges, successes, and problematics specific to this project and its outcomes. We argue that Inside Stories demonstrates both the potential and the limits of participatory art and/or co-creation in prisons, and based on our practical experience, we conclude that sustained access, continuity, and flexibility are essential to supporting ethically grounded co-creation in custodial contexts.