BACKGROUND
After receiving Deirdre Heath’s and my report of our self-funded literacy project in Kampala prisons (10th-26th March 2009) the trustees of the African Prison Project
asked if we would return to Uganda. I agreed - with the aim of stocking the libraries with suitable books, disposing of the inappropriate ones and doing further creative work with the prisoners on death row - on condition that I would not be asked to fundraise.
Following negotiations which lasted several months, APP agreed to contribute £1000 towards the books, materials and photocopying, and provide accommodation, whilst Dr Ian Morin kindly paid £800 to cover all remaining expenses.
I then had to shop very quickly for art materials and over £600 worth of books (mainly basic skills, English as a Second Language, graphic and simplified novels, Quickreads, etc.) wherever possible with an African content to counteract the current Anglo-centrism in the libraries. I also scoured charity shops for educational toys and books for the prison babies and had to deliver most of these to Alexander.
The sourcing, buying and other preparations - including numerous meetings, phone calls, e-mails, visits to the Yorkshire gallery and schools to deliver and collect work for the forthcoming prisons exhibition, giving a talk to a knitting group then collecting the teddies that they had made - amounted to over three weeks’ full-time work. The project itself lasted four weeks, averaging 53 hours per week and the report, further meetings, exhibition, etc.,will take a further 3-4 weeks.
PROJECT OBJECTIVES:
- Arrange a workshop at APP house for senior prison and Uganda Prison Service (UPS) staff on literacy project, providing an overview of British prisons, and comparing the monitoring of British and Ugandan prisons.
- Work closely Glorias and Bongole, the two APP library officers, on developing literacy work in several prisons.
- Continue to remove unsuitable books from the four libraries I worked with on our previous visit: Remand, Women’s, Upper and Condemned. Replace with basic skills books, preferably with African themes, graphic novels, Quickreads, etc., with some books in the vernacular to be acquired on arrival.(This to be done after consultation with O.C.s of each prison and the UPS)
- Conduct several classes in the various prisons on art, poetry and drama, including the welfare officers.
- Begin to assess needs in other prisons including Murchison Bay and Jinja.
- Attempt, through welfare officers at Women’s Prison, to get babies’ books and toys into the wards inside the prison and demonstrate their use. Present teddies I have had knitted to each prison baby.
- Visit Murchison Bay Primary School, donating materials from the UK for art/writing project linked to a Castleford school (for the exhibition in May)
- Collect suitable materials and photographs from prisons and the school for the exhibition.
- Make whatever headway possible on university library for Upper Prison. Dispose of unwanted books.
