Creativity, Self‐exploration and Change: Creative Arts‐based Activities’ Contribution to Desistance Narratives

Abstract

Keywords: creative cultural arts-based activities; desistance; offenders; prison-based projects This article begins by linking the central themes embedded in the desistance literature to the potential impacts of engagement in creative arts-based activities for prisoners. Qualitative data are used to highlight how participation in these activities can operate as a vehicle for realising the subjective and reflective capacities essential for the process of eliciting genuine engagement with prisoners' own desistance journeys. The article goes on to highlight that it is in the sphere of contributing to the desistance subjective changes and identity transformation narrative journey, not attribution to reducing reoffending rates, that creative arts-based activities' most significant impacts can be utilised. In alignment with the tradition of the desistance paradigm, the article concludes that arts-based outcomes are most effectively evidenced through nuanced, ethnographic qualitative data collection methodologies which include offenders as assets in both the desistance process and in evaluation methodology design. The Desistance Literature

The interplay of social capital, faith, and offender resettlement

“…Many researchers give accreditation to prison-leavers adopting a new pro-social identity after reshaping their lives (see, e.g. Maruna, 2001; Albertson, 2015). Within this understanding exists the construct of self-belief in that one can change and overcome past mistakes (Maruna, 2001) and re-join society.…”