Ten years of Penned Up: The inside story of a literary festival for people in prison

Penned Up a unique literary festival created for and with people in prison. This year, we mark the tenth anniversary of Penned Up with our 11th festival and our seventh at HMP Erlestoke, a category C prison in rural Wiltshire.

Penned Up began in HMP Lewes, where we put together a two-week programme with a committee of prisoners and staff. We never thought beyond making it happen. Prisons are not easy environments to work in. You leave your mobile phone at the gate, there is no handy internet to check anything. But ten years on, creating the programme is both the same and different as, even in a long-term jail like Erlestoke, people come and go.

Each programme strives to be broad enough to engage across the population. Some will come for events with former prisoners who have become authors, while there is a determined group who love anything to do with space, another devoted to history, and others who love music or anything to do with keeping fit.

Change is something we all need. But that’s hard in an environment that replicates itself each day. Surprise is a routine-breaker, whether it’s bringing a well-know celebrity like Mark ‘Billy’ Billington or a world-class classical pianist like Clare Hammond.

We have had novelist Kit De Waal, journalist Gary Younge, space expert Dr Lucy Berthoud, screenwriter Adrian Scott. And in 2023 a committee member, looking at my notes before the meeting said, ‘You haven’t got fucking Nick Cave.’ It was my delight to say. ‘I have!’

These are the moments that take people out of their ‘prison-selves’ and remind them who they are / will be on the outside.

Coming back after Covid took a while. Prisons were slow and we weren’t fully cleared for events until April 2022. And we knew we could be closed down at any point if there was risk of infection. Rather than running the usual intensive two-week programme, we spread the events over several months – thinking if we had to shutdown, we won’t lose the whole programme. Because that original two-week programme was intense. More than 20 events meant nobody could see everything, and you had to constantly move from one event to another. Rushing is not the norm in prison – people running is usually a sign of trouble.

Read more:

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My dad died just before the 2022 programme began and I found the events, most of which I chair, a comfort. As chair you try to hold an event together invisibly. The guest is the focus, but an audience of prisoners isn’t the same as your usual literary festival audience. Connecting with a group of people locked away for years helped me keep grief at bay. It reminded me that we don’t know what anyone is dealing with at any given time.

People have said how Penned Up events help keep their minds away from the things they can’t control. We always have former prisoners on the programme. They probably get the biggest applause, but then they often give the most of themselves, having been in the same position. Both Raphael Rowe (World’s Toughest Prisons) and Steve Gallant had packed rooms, but it was the latter’s retelling of his role in the Fishmongers’ Hall attack (Narwhal tusk included) that brought a hush to the room we’d never had before.

What has changed in ten years? The first change is we now run over one month. Our committee said they wanted the chance to see everything, rather than choosing between events running at the same time. The events are important to people. They will even postpone a visit to see a favourite speaker. Penned Up gives a space to breath, lets you think about things OTHER than prison, inspires you because you can see people like you changing their lives, motivates you because people have made the effort to come into prison to talk to you.

And HMP Erlestoke is one of 20 prisons to have laptops (no internet) in each cell. These allow the men to apply for courses, reply to tutors and book visits, all without paper which could be lost or disappear. So we can now advertise all Penned Up events this way, which means we can tell people a lot more about each guest than what we can squeeze onto a poster.

With a guest’s permission we can add pages from their books or a video of them performing. The prison media team (staff and prisoners) film each Penned Up, ensuring that the men learn useful skills and we reach a wider audience. At first, it was so everyone in the prison could view events they had been unable to attend. But as the popularity of Penned Up has spread, all other prisons with the same technology subscribe to our events reaching a potential 12,000 people in prison.

When we started Penned Up I just wanted to prove it could be done and done well. I wanted to show that people in prison could share the responsibility and offer ideas. Now, through experience and new technology, Penned Up has grown in reach and quality.

This year saw our first international collaboration with Krymson Media, working with former prisoners in the US to create a video using the prompt ‘tell me one truth about prison.’

At its heart, Penned Up pulls an audience into an intimate conversation with a guest speaker. At its best it makes visible the connections between people who appear to have little in common when they enter the room.

Two Penned Up committee members describe why it means so much

“In the 15 years I’ve spent in the prison system, Penned Up is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. It is an idea that is wholly inclusive of everyone, no matter who you are or what background you come from. There are many prisoners at Erlestoke with a range of complex issues, both diagnosed and undiagnosed. These include those with neurodiverse needs, mental health or behavioural issues, learning difficulties, and/or personality disorders.

“To find a safe space in which all of these complex characters can come together and respectfully listen, question, take part, share their own experiences, and then have the opportunity to reflect on what they have seen or heard is a very rare thing in prison. Yet Penned Up always manages to create this type of safe, non-judgemental space in which everyone is welcome.

“The range and diversity of events is such that everyone will find something they really enjoy, and the feedback from audiences suggests that they have found events to be interesting, engaging, and most importantly thought provoking and inspiring.“

“The Penned Up events held at HMP Erlestoke are a shining star here. They introduce us to things we would not be able to access otherwise and open up our minds to people and things we wouldn’t normally see.

“I have found some of the people who have attended fascinating and thoughtful. When we sit on the selection committee we talk everything over and think of things and people that not everyone agrees on due to the large population. We look at talks for everyone and usually find that these are some of the best events as they are unexpected. 

“David and Elizabeth are very patient and open to new ideas and engage us to get involved by writing to people and speaking to our peers, which helps us get ideas ourselves. This event should be across the justice system as it is so positive and hopeful and these events are one of the most positive things i have seen at Erlestoke and it is very encouraging to attend.“

Read more about Penned Up here.

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