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Prison Embroidery: On TV Tonight
Listed under: News
Published: Friday, September 30, 2011
Embroidery is proving the unlikely hero in prison rehabilitation.
Fine Cell Work features tonight – 30 September - on BBC 2 in The Culture Show, when the inmates of Wandsworth Prison talk about their unlikely passion for embroidery. Last year HMP Wandsworth’s prisoners created one of the highlights of the V&A Quilt exhibition, and more recently made an emotionally charged tribute to commemorate the lives of service men and women who died in the Afghanistan Campaign between 2001 and 2010. The quilt raised £2666 for Help for Heroes.
Fine Cell Work is a social enterprise that trains prisoners in paid, skilled, creative needlework – undertaken in the long hours spent in their cells – to foster hope, discipline and self esteem. This helps them to connect to society and to leave prison with the confidence and financial means to stop offending.
The stitchers spend an average of 20 hours per week doing embroidery in their cells: the highest earners stitch for as long as 40 hours. It’s a way of life that enables them to serve their time with dignity and purpose and the earnings give them hope, skills and independence. Fine Cell Work is done in 29 prisons with 420 prisoners and 75% of the stitchers are men. All the classes have waiting lists.
Prisoners are taught by skilled volunteers and this important relationship can motivate them to achieve things they never thought possible. There is a lack of purposeful activity in prison, where convicted prisoners, 70% of whom have one or more mental health disorder, spend an average of 17 hours a day locked in their cells. Prisoners earn approximately 37% of the sale price and there is around 100 hours in each product.
Fine Cell Work is a social enterprise that trains prisoners in paid, skilled, creative needlework – undertaken in the long hours spent in their cells – to foster hope, discipline and self esteem. This helps them to connect to society and to leave prison with the confidence and financial means to stop offending.
The stitchers spend an average of 20 hours per week doing embroidery in their cells: the highest earners stitch for as long as 40 hours. It’s a way of life that enables them to serve their time with dignity and purpose and the earnings give them hope, skills and independence. Fine Cell Work is done in 29 prisons with 420 prisoners and 75% of the stitchers are men. All the classes have waiting lists.
Prisoners are taught by skilled volunteers and this important relationship can motivate them to achieve things they never thought possible. There is a lack of purposeful activity in prison, where convicted prisoners, 70% of whom have one or more mental health disorder, spend an average of 17 hours a day locked in their cells. Prisoners earn approximately 37% of the sale price and there is around 100 hours in each product.
