Out of Styal

Out of Styal: a jewellery workshop run by Deborah Zeldin O’Neill and Sarah O’Hana with women prisoners at HMP Styal, Cheshire, UK, in conjunction with City College Manchester.

The idea to run a jewellery workshop in prison was set very early on in the planning of the Ars Ornata Europeana for Manchester 2007. This was not as directly linked to the obvious notion of ‘being inside’ as it was an opportunity to offer quite a different audience a new set of skills that they might engage with and adopt for their own future development.

The decision was rather a brave one. What made us think that they would be interested? How could we get past the association with precious materials? Of what use could our specialism be to them? The environment restricted our activity to a minimum:

• No tools or sharps of any sort allowed
• Lengths of wire, ribbon, string etc, restricted to 12 inches
• High proportion of self harm
• Some homeless

The astonishing results of this six-week workshop will be exhibited during the Ars Ornata Europeana conference at The Lowry Centre, Salford Quays, Greater Manchester.

We are indebted to the collaboration of the women in HMP Styal and sincerely hope that, despite the problems of tracking those who are now out and possibly homeless, they eventually see this and receive our good wishes for the future.