Strands of activity in Justice in Education
Curating the university experience of justice-experienced students
Over 12 million people in the United Kingdom have a criminal record. The stereotypes and misrepresentation of people with experience of the Criminal Justice System produce a range of collateral consequences that penetrate every aspect of their life, including the ability to access and participate in Higher Education. Our founding members, Dr Helena Gosling and Sarah MacLennan lead pioneering educational research that utilises creative methodologies to critically engage with the university experience of students with a criminal record. Building on a partnership with the National Justice Museum (NJM), the RE-PRESENT exhibition showcases a series of visual minutes (graphic illustrations), created by a Liverpool artist Rowan Watts emerging from research activity with students who have a criminal record.
Criminal Justice Conversations
Since September 2016, Dr Helena Gosling and Professor Lol Burke have led an initiative for people with lived experience of the criminal justice system to study alongside postgraduate students from LJMU. The module (Criminal Justice Conversations) works alongside criminal justice services to create opportunities for people who, ordinarily, would not meet, to learn alongside each other. This community of practice provides a safe space for people with academic, professional and lived experience of the criminal justice system to come together, as students, and work through a series of criminological issues.
The programme consists of 15 two-hour face-to-face sessions, taught across the academic year, each of which is led by a subject expert and focuses on a contemporary penological issue.
In her recently published monograph Helena says:
“It has provided more than an opportunity for students and staff to engage in a thought-provoking educational activity. It has created a discrete site of resistance between two separate but interconnected sectors that challenges the status quo.”
The initiative facilitates the production of a creative pedagogical activity that promotes compassion and commitment amongst all involved, enhancing understanding of people as well as their experiences beyond the classroom. As a result, students often share (typically) hidden experiences and stories that undermine/enhance/explain the labels they have been given or that they themselves have adopted. This insight has subsequently provided a catalyst for Helena’s work in and around the university experience of students with experience of the criminal justice system.
“The higher education sector must do more to remove unnecessary barriers to university for people with experience of the criminal justice system. To date, conversations have focused on access to higher education. This is, of course, an important issue, but so is sustained, productive and meaningful participation in university life. We need to do more to demystify ‘who’ goes to university and engage in active attempts to dismantle politicised systems of inattention which characteristically surround people with experience of the criminal justice system in higher education.”
Download a copy of Dr Helena Gosling’s monograph
Creative Collaborations: Perfume Stories
Michael O’Shaughnessy (Senior Lecturer Graphic Design and Illustration) leads an innovative research project that applies a multi-sensory approach to learning in Art and Design. Perfume Stories are a series of sensory and storytelling workshops based around olfaction and perfume. This unique methodology aims to facilitate learning and aid in the rehabilitation of prisoners at His Majesty’s Prison in the UK.
This research programme is run in collaboration with Novus - one of the biggest providers of Education in the Prison System.
This project began in 2021 when it was installed as part of the Tate Exchange Programme at Liverpool Tate. Since its pilot with prisoners at HMP Liverpool in 2022, it has been rolled out across four sites, HMP Hindley, HMP Buckley Hall, HMP Liverpool and HMP Risley.
The latest stage of Perfume Stories is managed by Michael O’Shaughnessy and delivered by Novus staff across five Prison sites in the north east (HMP Holme House, HMP Durham, HMP Northumberland, HMP Kirklevington and HMP Deerbolt).
Perfume Stories has been shortlisted at the North East Prison Group and Novus Awards in March 2024.
Find out more about Perfume Stories: