A Week in Manchester: Speechmaking in a Women's Prison
We have had a very busy period of activity at Dash Arts and wanted to share the momentous week in Manchester: a trip to ISPA (International Conference for Arts Producers); the launch of Aviva Studios (formerly known as the Factory) and a speech writing workshop held in a women’s prison.
As we embark on our Public House project, we’ve been keen to ensure our England-wide public speaking workshops give us a broad perspective of views and experiences. Each workshop begins with a request to the participant to tell us what they feel passionate about and what they’d like to change in their community. And then over the course of a few hours, they gradually write and deliver a speech advocating for and articulating this passion. Each view is obviously unique. However, gradually as we move across communities, we’re building an extraordinarily complex and rich view of a country. By January next year when we go into the National Theatre Studio, we’ll be knee deep in ideas and passion to conjure a theatre work that I truly hope will offer a way to understand the state of our nation.
This week - as part of this exploration, we were invited to a women's prison, just outside Manchester. Our visit coincided with a gathering of international arts producers, ISPA, in Manchester and the opening of the Manchester International Festival and their enormous new building, Aviva Studios. So I plotted a northern adventure.
The trip to the prison was eye-opening and extremely emotionally full-on. We entered through multiple locked doors to spend the day away from phones, bags and our lives beyond the walls. The prison is based in a former orphanage which carries a particular poignancy as most of the women we spent time with were missing their children at home. The speeches were inspiring and devastating - covering topics such as mental health support in prisons, lack of support of educational special needs in schools which had resulted eventually in one woman’s incarceration ‘I had to go to prison to realise I needed help’, a lack of disability access in prisons ‘I’m already being punished by being here’ and the poor quality of food. Again as before in the workshops, I was floored by their reflections and insights, and the enthusiasm and commitment they universally brought to the full day’s workshop. After writing sessions and drama games, at the end of the day, the women shared their speeches. It was emotional for everyone and the support that they gave each other as they shared their sadness and sometimes very personal stories was striking. We finished in a circle with each person offering three words about the experience. And then as facilitators we watched as the women patiently waited for the probation officer to escort them back to their rooms, and we were released, out beyond the eyesore of the security wall.
I’m keen to find ways to continue to support the women and their voices. Some of them will be released later over the next few months and we’ll invite them to share their speeches with us in person at events in Manchester and London in November. We’re recording a podcast for Dash and also for National Prison Radio that will include their speeches and hopefully subject to funding, we’ll continue to work with the prison, returning with a script next year.
And then in Manchester both before and after the workshop, I wore another Dash hat, networking and representing the organisation with theatre and festival producers from across the world; building relationships with people who might support and enable our work. It was jarring to move so instantly from prosecco celebrating the opening of the new Aviva Studios accompanied by a sneak preview tour of their marvellous glossy spaces and the occasional elevator pitch from me as I met someone whom I hoped might be interested in one of our forthcoming shows to following a probation officer with an immense jangling ring of keys around dilapidated Victorian prison cells. But also the contrast was fitting - a true representation of the diverse nature of Dash Arts and the world that I have the privilege to inhabit.
I’m back in London this morning and the women and their speeches are still resonating with me deeply. They’re resting alongside the words that I’m reading of transcripts from interviews with survivors of the current war in Ukraine. That’s another project, The Reckoning, about which we shall tell more over the coming months. These interviewees are also profoundly insightful and need to be heard.
Our current work at Dash is unifying around a theme of amplifying lesser heard voices. I look forward to sharing these voices and stories with you.
