The starting point of this project can be found in the difficulties encountered by the educational staff (educators, teachers, volunteers, etc.) in carrying out their profession in prison. The education in prison is different from the one in schools: it involves many factors linked to the prison context and its organisation, the prisoners, the rules, the organisation of the time, which all influence the teaching activities and make them extremely complex.

The peculiarity of the recipients (either waiting for trial or already convicted) conditions their participation in the educational activities. The same can be said for working prisoners,because it can happen that work and teaching sessions are at the same time.

For these reasons, the teachers and volunteers involved in the proposed partnership aim to share their experiences, discuss teaching methodologies as well as the encountered criticalities, and compare the best practices.

 

PROJECT PARTNERS

The leading partner: Associazione Culturale Le Interferenze (Italy) www.festearchimedee.it

The Association Le Interferenze was founded in 2004 with the aim of fostering the promotion, development and interchange between cultures, constituting a kind of federation of thought that recognises creativity in all its expressions as a source of inspiration. As a non-profit organization, the Association focuses on planning, organizing, promoting, and managing scientific, artistic, socio-cultural, and entertainment activities aimed at community development with particular attention to the world of children and young people.

The Feste Archimedee, an event dedicated to youth talent that is held every year in Syracuse, hosts the creations based on the autobiographical strategy realised during the ‘Chrisalis and Butterfly’ project.
UNIVERSIDAD DE LA LAGUNA (Spain) http://www.ull.es
The University of La Laguna and the Penitentiary Institutions of Tenerife have a long tradition of research projects whose main objective has been to facilitate the processes of social inclusion of persons deprived of their liberty. This long process has led to the development of projects related to arts, culture and creative expression that have linked the ACNO (Aula Cultural de Narración Oral de la ULL), the FICLS (Festival Internacional de Cuentacuentos de Silos), the Revista Internacional de Narración Oral “Mnemósyne” and the Centro de Educación de Adultos de Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the integration of life stories for the personal growth of prisoners and their visibility in the receiving society. The critical pedagogy group PEDACRI coordinates participation in the project by introducing the autobiographical strategy in the Tenerife Penitentiary Centre and giving visibility through narrative products and performances that are disseminated through social networks, educational centres or cultural festivals. The project coordinates the edition of the manual of good practices for the introduction of the autobiographical strategy in prison pedagogy. 
Changes&Chances (Netherlands) www.changeschances.com
Changes&Chances is a network organisation that realises professional educational programmes with creative means as a tool or disadvantaged persons and those who have been or are at risk of being in contact with justice and criminal law. We aim for and contribute to a structural and integrated policy and budget for arts education in rehabilitation in all institutions related to criminal justice and criminal law and the prevention of criminal behaviour and Crecidivism. We work with prisoners, ex-prisoners, young people at risk, drug addicts, alcoholics and other marginalised people. The project creates a link between the arts and the human dimension of social reintegration.
Center za dopisno izobrazevanje Univerzum (Slovenia) www.cdi-univerzum.si
The CDI Univerzum was founded in 1957 as an educational institution and is one of the most established providers of adult education in Slovenia. It was founded by the Slovenian government with the aim of providing the necessary educational skills to people of all ages and thus fulfilling their expectations of lifelong learning. It is an institution of higher education (16+). The students are adolescents and young people who have dropped out of regular education, unemployed middle-aged people, workers in need of retraining, pensioners. The students come from very different social backgrounds: from well-off people with a low level of education to people from disadvantaged areas and different types of immigrants. The project offers work with the families of prisoners as a vital dimension for full reintegration.
MAISON DES SCIENCES DE L’HOMME D’AQUITAINE (France) www.msha.fr

Mica (Mediations, Information, Communication, Arts) is a research laboratory in the University Bordeaux-Montaigne. Our team is specialized in the assessment of information systems using ICT (information and communication technologies). Our works are focused on the challenges and uses of digital technologies in the context of economic and social realities. As a research group in the humanities, we are particularly attached to the social, human and ethical dimensions of the project which is devoted to helping self-reconsideration of prisoners for better social integration.

MSHA (Maison des Sciences de l’Homme d’Aquitaine), who locally manages administratively our partnership, is dedicated to the humanist aspects of basic and applied research.
Associação Portuguesa de Educação nas Prisões (Portugal) www.apenp.pt
The Portuguese Association for Prison Education (APEnP), a branch of the European Prison Education Association (EPEA), whose interests are focused on the promotion and development of education and related activities in prisons in Portugal, is an organisation founded in 2018 and formed by prison teachers, higher education teachers, trainers, researchers. The general objective of APEnP is to provide the means for all types of initiatives, programmes or projects that aim to develop, promote and support the objectives of this organisation. It provides physical and virtual spaces for the dissemination of research both in conferences and in digital journals, websites and books.
Udruga za promicanje knjizevnosti i kulture Skribonauti www.skribonauti.hr

 
Skribonauti is a non-profit civil society organisation whose aim is to promote culture and the arts among socially excluded and marginalised groups. The basic premise of our activities is cooperation through direct contact between marginalised groups and artists, with the aim of exploring how direct work with marginalised groups and adaptation to the limits of institutional constraints can stimulate artists to find new models of artistic work, and to what extent the articulation of the life stories of marginalised groups can lead the general public to question existing social and artistic paradigms. The project contributes to linking artists’ work in penal institutions, emphasising artists’ commitment to social justice and highlighting the gender perspective.