Inside Stories

Inside Stories was first shown as a work in progress at Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, 2022. During an accompanying symposium Alexa invited feedback from an audience made up of people working in the arts, in mental health and those with experience of the criminal justice system. The exhibition at Open Eye included documentation of work created by participants in their cells in response to material sent in by the artist during the Covid lockdown, when prisons were entirely shut down and planned workshops were cancelled or rescheduled at the last minute.

Discussion of the keywords Justice, Power, Freedom, Responsibility and Judgement, introduced in workshops to inspire the creation of collages and facilitate visual storytelling, evoked strong and heartfelt responses from participants, who also added Power, Trust and Integrity to the list. Each individual then went on to weave their personal narrative around one or more of the keywords, with very little need for further prompting.

In subsequent workshops we focused on collaboratively seeking ways of communicating each person’s unique experiences through still and moving imagery. One-to-one meetings on the wings at Feltham YOI were significant in that they provided a secure space for people to further explore ways of visually representing their experiences without fear of judgement by their peers.