You’Re Able to Give a Little Bit of the Outside World to a Group of People That Don’T Have It'

‘You’re able to give a little bit of the outside world to a group of people that don’t have it' Jenny Agutter has had an incredibly varied acting career, from initial fame in The Railway Children and her BAFTA winning performance in Equus, to her ongoing role as Sister Julienne in Call the Midwife and appearances in two films of the Avengers franchise. Since returning to the UK in 1992, she has been patron and ambassador for an increasing number of charities and dedicated her 2012 OBE to all those organisations that she worked with. Jenny has two main strands to her charitable work. Close family members’ illness and disability led her to become an ambassador for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust and later, a patron of Graeae, a theatre company led by people with disabilities. The second strand follows her passionate desire to help the forgotten people in society, strengthening the bonds of family and community through her support as patron and ambassador for St Giles’ Trust and Action for Children respectively. By working with charities to solve the root problems behind mental illness, incarceration and homelessness, Jenny seeks to give opportunities to those with fewer life choices. She is now continuing this work as an ambassador for Liberty Choir. We spoke to her about her experiences of the charity. Why do you support Liberty Choir? Liberty Choir is a very practical organisation. People are sharing the same sounds, the same music and they’re finding a way of singing together. Those who join the choir, often go on to join the choir outside of prison, so they begin to be part of a community. Why should we help prisoners? It seems insane not to establish the possibility for someone coming out of prison to contribute to society. They come out with pocket money, they come out disconnected from so much they were connected with, they find it hard to get work – it’s a really impossible situation. What do you think the prisoners get out of the programme? It’s two hours each week that removes them from being completely de-socialised and gives them a sense that they could just be: without criticism, without comment, without anything other than just being with somebody. What impact do you think it has on the volunteers in the programme? You’re able to give a little bit of the outside world to a group of people that don’t have it. Was there one moment in the programme that stood out to you? The man sitting beside me was very young, the age of my son and very quiet. He just said it was really important for him to be able to go there once a week and to have that time to focus his mind on something other than being in prison. When I left, he gave me the biggest hug. It really touched me. What your first musical awakening? I went to ballet school very young. We danced every day to live piano - Chopin, Beethoven, and Elgar, real pieces of music. Music was just part of my daily life and that was a special thing to be given. What music do you listen to now? My taste goes all over the place. I love early vocal chants, baroque music, classical, romantic music. I’m very touched by Bob Dylan, Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, Jethro Tull, all that stuff. It’s the simpler pieces of music that get me. Do you have a hobby? I keep albums of my digital pictures. We forget what the eye sees, the things that our eye rests on, the way the light catches something. That’s what I end up collecting. Tell us something surprising about yourself? Someone might think it’s peculiar that I would want to go into prison. What are you most proud of achieving in your life? Continuing to work. It changes all the time. I’m just happy that I do manage to keep on working, and that’s an achievement I think. As told to Alex Roberts .

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