‘I coul dn’ t

W o r d s b y tim bouquet

P h o t o g r a p h s b y A n na H u i x

hac k It’s a long way from a jail cell to the great theatres and galleries of London. But one charity is helping creative inmates and pri s o n. ex-offenders make the break wr i ting was my way out’

Standing, from left: Dean Stalham; Chris Wilson. Seated, from left: Not Shut Up’s Sarah Leipciger; the charity’s managing editor Marek Kazmierski; Fabian Spencer s P o t l i g h t N o t S h u t u P

‘When I got out, I said, “I’m gonna be a writer.” My ex-missus laughed. “Forget it,” she said. “You’re a gangster from Cricklewood”’

s a criminal, Dean Stalham was no stranger to court; but on a wet day in February, former prisoner Nx3669 stepped out in front of an audience, not a jury, at the Royal Court Theatre in London to introduce his play, The Barred, Ato be performed for the first time by his new theatre company of fellow former criminals. Neither play nor players could have been Dean Stalham “The goal is to provide at least created without the help of a small but vital Playwright, artist, 51 24 weeks of sustainable income charity, Not Shut Up, which, in its decade of a year to its cast and crew. Our existence, has promoted and published creative Stalham served five-and-a-half launch play, The Barred, which writing, paintings and drawings generated by years in some of Britain’s toughest Not Shut Up founder Marek the “unfree” in prisons, detention centres and prisons, including Wandsworth, Kazmierski and the Academy other secure institutions, as well as work pro- Brixton, Pentonville and inspired me to write, is tough but duced by former inmates. Highpoint. Novelist Will Self says not without comedy. It’s written Not Shut Up receives no public funding and and we see the grinding routines and hypocrisy Chris Wilson interview at Chelsea College of his work ‘gives people who have lost from the inside and takes a poke at relies entirely on philanthropic support. Its common in prisons through his eyes. Writer, painter, 53 Arts. I brought a big roll of canvas their way their dignity back, how prisons are run. For example, quarterly magazine of the same name circu- The Not Shut Up magazine is portrayed as I had done. They rolled it out and enabling them to move forward’ prisoners get £7.50 for sweeping lates to around 300 establishments nationwide a beacon in a bleak prison system described viv- Wilson served a sentence in said, ‘Some people would find the wing, but only £5 if they go with 50,000 readers – and has inspired hun- idly in Stalham’s play. “We know that in prisons the US for a grand theft and your art contentious,’ and I said, “I first came acrossNot Shut Up, to education classes. That extra dreds like Stalham to take up the pen. every copy is read by five inmates,” Kazmierski conspiracy felony, followed by ‘Define contentious,’ and the guy the magazine, in the library at £2.50 represents a tin of tuna and The charity’s managing editor, Marek says. “As with Dean, we want to inspire not just sentences for a series of parole spat back, ‘I hoped you would.’ Wandsworth, and was impressed three extra Mars bars –currency Kazmierski – a novelist, publisher and transla- creativity, but confidence in creativity.S o many violations, until his deportation They took me in and I got a First by the creative writing and art inside – so there’s no competition. tor – remembers vividly his first day teaching of our writers never dreamt of being successful back to the UK in 1998. He came with Distinction in painting. it featured. I started writing and “I have written and staged six English as a second language to young offend- in what they do. Something as bright and colour- across Not Shut Up in 2013 “Since then, Not Shut Up had four scenes of my first play plays, but The Barred is the first ers at Feltham Prison in 2003, where he subse- ful as Not Shut Up in our prisons – which are lan- when he met Marek Kazmierski has given me the opportunity and performed in Wandsworth. about prison. At the Royal Court quently became a governor. “I was taken to guishing in the 19th century, with no internet at an art show in Brixton confidence to stage exhibitions When I got out in 2006, I said, we had an audience of former a classroom with a dozen young men aged 18 to access to literature – sends out a positive mes- and has published a hand-made ‘I’m gonna be a writer.’ My ex- offenders, ex-cops, and actors 21 and given a cupboard of well-thumbed books. sage about the power of creative thinking.” “Eighty per cent of prisoners in book of my art – but writing is missus laughed. ‘Forget it,’ she like Sheila Hancock, who has I was given no brief, no walk around the prison, Not Shut Up acknowledges that Britain’s jails the US are in for drug- or alcohol- increasingly important to me. said. ‘You’re a gangster from been hugely supportive, as has the no induction about security. I was simply dumped – hamstrung by overcrowding, chronic under- related crimes. I was one of them. “My first book,Horse Latitudes, Cricklewood.’ Garrick Club. The response was there and expected to keep these young men staffing, drugs, self-harming and violence – will Six years in all, starting in Dallas is based on my prison years and “I set up a couple of art groups great. I’m now talking to several occupied for three-and-a-half hours. not be dragged into the 21st century by creative- when I was 17. I’d gone to San is illustrated with 16 paintings. It for ex-offenders and, through London theatres about a three- “To take people who’ve been excluded from writing classes alone, even if Kazmierski’s poetry Francisco to be in a band – then was inspired by Jean Rhys’s Wide the Not Shut Up Academy, I’ve week run. I feel my life has a good education or who have excluded themselves, sessions at Wandsworth are oversubscribed and the drugs and the alcohol came in. Sargasso Sea, which I read when created the Debarred Theatre direction and that creative arts then deny them their liberty and expect them to Stalham is working with dyslexics in the same The instruments went to the I was in California Rehabilitation Company to give those with help rehabilitation. Even so, I’ve go to a classroom and sit there and behave and jail. In England and Wales, we imprison more pawnshop and I went on a journey Center 18 years ago. My aim was experience of the judicial system been turned down for 250 jobs do qualifications is setting them up to fail. people than any other nation in Western Europe, way down the rabbit hole. It’s to show what it’s like for 200 men – former prisoners, police officers, in two years. The bad tag sticks. “Prisons are like army camps; uniforms not at a rate of 148 per 100,000 head of population. been even harder coming back. in this huge tank, triple-bunks, lawyers – the chance to write Sometimes I feel like I’m still clothes, ranks not roles, orders not options,” In Germany, the figure is 78.T he prison popula- “When I was deported, I did people kipping on the floor. and perform plays. prisoner Nx3669.” Kazmierski adds, pleased with the grit and tion of around 85,700 is increasing annually by three years in rehab in London, “I’m writing a film treatment realism unfolding from Stalham’s pen via the six up to two per cent, swelled by remand prisoners which made it more than a decade for it and have completed a actors at the Royal Court. The Barred tells the and sex offenders. Yet those figures will not deter spent in institutions. I had a lot of collection of short stories called story of Daniel, wrongly convicted at the hands the charity, nor those who work for it. help coming back, but the seed for Glue Ponies. I like to stay busy. I of his own father and daughter. Daniel – like The London-based Canadian novelist Sarah change is curiosity. I discovered like projects. I want broken people Dean – grew up on a crime-ridden council estate Leipciger, a Not Shut Up trustee, has taught k painting in rehab and went to an to heal and to have choices.”

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creative writing in prisons for 12 years and ‘A lot of the inmates spends a day a week in Wandsworth. With called me Juliet; 1,877 inmates, it is one of the largest prisons in they thought Western Europe. “When I started, it was scary. Shakespeare and There was a lot of banter,” she says. “But now writing was pansy. I’m 39, a mother of three, and a bit older than Not Shut Up gives a lot of them. Being foreign, an outsider, helps. the lie to that’ They all think I’m Australian! “Through workshops of six to nine, I get them writing about themselves and their real lives – because in prison it’s all about them as prison- ers, their crimes, their trials and how they are being hard done by. I want them to break free, leave the four walls. We switch to fiction and they learn how they can draw from their own experi- ences but are in complete control of character, plot and events. It’s not something they have experienced before. Seeing their names in print in Not Shut Up is also a huge deal.” Kazmierski agrees. “For most prisoners, prestige is a rare commodity.” Now 41, he grew up in Warsaw until he was 12. Then, in 1985, his mother, an economist and Solidarity activist, and his younger sister “managed to get passports through bribery and all manner of means” and escaped Communist Poland to join his father, a steelworker, in London, where he had fled when martial law had been imposed in 1981. Granted asylum in 1988, Kazmierski won a Decibel Penguin Prize in 2007 – awarded to non-fiction personal accounts of the experience of immigration. Not Shut Up works with 22 partner organisa- tions, including the Koestler Trust, the Royal Fabian Spencer “I acted in two productions in Court Theatre and London Shakespeare Writer, actor, director, Brixton with my fellow inmate Workout, to deliver theatre, creative writing, producer, 42 Darren Raymond. Shakespeare photography and art exhibitions and readings and Sinatra mixed A Winter’s Tale by the unfree. Equally importantly, it is also From the age of 14, Spencer served with Sinatra standards. Then we trying to slow down the “revolving door” that a number of sentences for offences wrote Blacking Iago; I played Iago sees up to 73 per cent of prisoners reconvicted such as assault and driving while to Darren’s Othello. It was filmed within one year of release. It has set up the Not disqualified, which took him from by the BBC’s The Culture Show. Shut Up Academy, which works with and pub- detention centres to Feltham Young “After I was released in 2005, lishes writers and artists post-prison, easing Offenders Institution and then to when all charges against me were them into their new lives. So far, it has seven adult prisons at Wandsworth, dismissed, we took Blacking Iago members. None has reoffended. Belmarsh and finally Brixton. He on a 48-date tour. Then we did two They include Stalham – jailed for trying to spent seven months at the latter on plays, HMP Macbeth and Cracking sell a Warhol print of Marilyn Monroe worth remand for an armed robbery he the Whip, at the Intermission £10m; writer and painter Chris Wilson, whose did not commit – never facing trial, Theatre in Knightsbridge, where violent early life of crime-fuelled drug addic- but losing his job as a charity Darren is now artistic director. tion landed him in some of America’s most fundraiser nonetheless Then I met Dean Stalham and notorious maximum-security prisons; and discovered Not Shut Up. Fabian Spencer, playwright, director, actor and “I encountered Shakespeare “I produced and led 80 hours rapper, who, between the ages of 14 and 31, was when I was approached at of rehearsals for The Barred. in prison 10 times for various offences until he Brixton in 2004 by Dr Bruce Wall A theatre company that includes discovered Shakespeare in Brixton. Through of the London Shakespeare ex-offenders is important, as it can Not Shut Up, they all work with current inmates Workout. Bruce brought [the lead them away from reoffending. and fellow ex-prisoners – and on these pages, actors] Mark Rylance and Janet “Some can hack prison; they tell their stories… 1 Suzman to do workshops with I couldn’t. Acting and writing us and I began to understand and was my way out. Last year ‘Barred’ is next showing at Fairfield Halls, love Shakespeare. A lot of the I completed a degree in drama Croydon, as part of the Ambition Festival inmates called me Juliet; they and applied theatre. All I had on 23 July, then in August at Rich Mix, Bethnal thought Shakespeare and writing on paper before was a criminal Green, as part of Youth Take Over Month. was pansy. Not Shut Up gives record. Now my kids think of me For more about the charity: notshutup.org the lie to that. as somebody to look up to.”

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