The inmates at Inverness Prison are staging a local art exhibition to help improve their life skills, health and well being, according to their governor.
Realising Potential will be staged at Inverness Museum and Art Gallery with work by offenders participating in the Fife College Learning Programmes at the Inverness jail.
The partnership project offered by Fife College, Inverness Museum and Art Gallery and the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) includes ceramics made following a series of workshops held in September to explore and interpret the past through Scottish artefacts from the museum, led by curator Cait McCullagh.
Digital collages produced by the inmates are also on show and have been commissioned by the SPS in partnership with Fife College, to improve the prison environment for all living and working there.
The exhibition will run from Thursday, January 15 until Saturday, March 7.
It supports Unlocking Potential Transforming Lives, the 2015 organisational review of the SPS, and fulfills the wider High Life Highland promise to give all communities in the region the chance to learn about their culture and heritage.
Andrew Hodge, governor at the prison, said: “Arts and culture in a custodial setting is an innovative approach that supports Unlocking Potential and Transforming Lives by providing those in our care with the opportunity to engage in something different that raises self-esteem, improves health and well-being while providing offenders with the opportunity to learn and develop new skills whilst building on their existing assets. It also allows offenders to express themselves through the creative arts.”
One inmate said: “The workshop that Cait delivered was fascinating. I really enjoyed learning about Scottish History from a knowledgeable source. She made it fun, tactile and stretched my imagination.”
Another said: “Education has given me a new lease of life and has helped me to accomplish more things and learn to have a better future. Education can give you the opportunities that you have taken for granted before, but now I can use the skills that I have developed when I am released.”
