The academic project Prisons of Note brings joins civilians in harmony with inmates. ‘We have the most amazing conversations’
Last week a group gathered in the chapel of Mountjoy Prison’s progression unit for an unusual event. Many attending had not been in a prison before, but were there for a symposium on music and incarceration organised by Wexford native Dr Áine Mangaoang, an associate professor in popular music at the University of Oslo, and her colleague Dr Lucy Cathcart Frödén.
The Solas Workplace Wellbeing Choir and Mountjoy Prison’s Inhouse Voices choir at Mountjoy Prison recording and performing two of Johnny Cash’s hit songs in May 2022. Photograph: Alan Betson At first, choir practice was like the Ballroom of Romance, says Jones, with the men on one side of the room and the women on the other. “People were actually quite frightened about ‘How do we behave with people who we perceive to be different from us?’ And that has changed phenomenally. We don’t leave here and leave here. They’re in our hearts. It’s so relational and there’s so much tenderness within the choir. And there’s challenges ... It’s just really open and honest.
It’s unusual to have an inside/outside choir, and it’s unusual to have an event like the symposium, with prisoners speaking on stage about their experiences. Alongside performances of songs such as Lean on Me and The Auld Triangle, clips were shown from a creative documentary developed with director Oonagh Murphy, which outlined the men’s prison experiences and the impact of the choir on them.
There are tricky parts to doing this research. One is how to measure success, while addressing the related presumption that if a prisoner takes part in a music programme, then they won’t reoffend. Mangaoang says she and Cathcart Frödén are looking at the wider picture. “It’s a societal problem here that we have about the systems not working, people not getting the support that they need, or there aren’t maybe the structures out there being provided.
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