Enriched listening at Askham Grange, a prison for women in North Yorkshire

“When I arrived in the ballroom, I saw a large amount of different instruments and I instantly thought, this is going to be good!”

In May 2024 The Foundation partnered with the National Literacy Trust, delivering a captivating, interactive listening enrichment session for twelve women at Askham Grange Prison for Women in North Yorkshire.

Negative experiences of formal learning, exclusion from school and low levels of literacy are common among people in prison. To help individuals re-engage with learning and literacy, NLT works with writers, artists, poets and performers into prisons to encourage new, fun and accessible ways to engage women in reading, writing and storytelling.

These sessions are innovative attempts to encourage more women to participate, particularly those who might not necessarily identify as readers. Dame Evelyn and her team used instruments from The Collection to demonstrate the power of music to communicate meaning, spark conversation, evoke emotion and inspire reflection.

The room fell silent and suddenly Evelyn began with a demonstration on the snare drum. As she played, the tempo began to change and you could feel the whole room vibrate from the intensity of her playing. The audience was in rapture, wanting more.

Evelyn then encouraged participants to take part, trying out the various instruments, exploring the sounds they made and how each vibrated and resonated in so many different ways. This led to a sea of emotive descriptions, illustrating participants’ reactions to the percussive sounds they generated and heard.

In turn, this sparked discussions around how we communicate and how word choice, speed and delivery can have a bearing on the consequences of how what we say is interpreted. Participants learned how to create a presence through silence and gained a deeper appreciation of the value of positive communication.

Impact and Outcomes

“The whole experience was totally amazing and has resulted in me listening to all the sounds I hear around me each day.”

Participant

Feedback from participants was universally positive, with the top outcomes reported being that the session

‘inspired me to think about my future more’, that ‘it made me feel within that my story is worth sharing’ and that ‘it made me want to engage with other education opportunities in my setting’.

Reflecting on the value for their outreach programme, colleagues at the NPT said:

‘The event was successful in many ways. A lot more ladies attended than usual and have fed back to say that it made them think, it made them take time to stop and listen and write down their thoughts. They have also requested music books to be available in the library to read and the staff and some of the ladies are hoping to start up a music group.’

Rebecca Rowan, Project Manager

‘Being in the company of Evelyn today in a woman’s prison was a transformative experience. The way her kindness worked in making people get involved in something completely alien to them was astonishing. For those people to touch a musical instrument, then explore its sound and then finally to collectively submit and connect to the power of making music left everyone in tears. I’ve never witnessed anything like that.’

Ralph Dartford, Project Manager

This session was part of NLT’s Criminal Justice Outreach programme, funded by the Ministry of Justice.