alongside prisoners, researchers at Sheffield Hallam University cite the findings of a study from New Zealand, which explored the process of desistance from crime by ex-offenders. They noted “that the difference between those who were 'going straight' and those that were not, lay not in the circumstances of their lives, but


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rather in the way people interpreted their lives”. Desistance was seen to be linked to cognitive rather than circumstantial change. So if, in the context of ongoing attempts to cut recidivism, creative writing can contribute to that perceptual and attitudinal shift, surely it should be given greater priority in offender learning programmes.


5


But does the course have enough functionality to justify its existence in a climate in which budgets are squeezed and core skills given priority? Whilst not overtly prioritising areas like spelling, punctuation and grammar, it nonetheless seeks to develop other essential aspects of literacy.


When asked in a course evaluation to identify what skills they had developed during the


Delivering this type of course is not, however, always straightforward. To convince people, both prisoners and staff, of its value can be a challenge in itself. In spite of repeated and varied attempts to promote the course,


recruitment has at times been a struggle, due in part to it being perceived by some as “a niche course”, to use the phrase of one learner who was particularly keen to widen participation. Other obstacles have been a misunderstanding of what the course offers (one learner turned up expecting to learn calligraphy!), the view amongst those already writing poetry that it is unnecessary, and a fear of not being able to write well enough.


Another issue has been the difficulty of marrying its therapeutic possibilities with the need for tuition towards specified learning outcomes


within a set timeframe. For the course to be viable, the completion of the learner's portfolio has to be the priority, but on occasions this has felt like a distraction from something more significant, and the imposed course end like a crude interruption to something which has only just begun.


Providing a safe, consistent and supportive environment in which people can write about their lives is also difficult, especially in a prison. The need to take on new learners once the


course is underway in order to meet data requirements can shift the dynamic of a group and unsettle those who are beginning to forge a rapport with one another. At the opposite extreme, I have had to accommodate learners who could barely be in the same room together after a series of disputes on the wings, and whose animosity intensified when one allegedly stole the other's handwritten short story and destroyed it out of spite.


4. Leibrich, J. (1993). Straight to the Point: Angles on Giving Up Crime. Dunedin: Otago University Press. 5. Albertson, K. and O'Keeffe, C. ( 2012) The Good Days are Amazing- An Evaluation of the Writers in Prison Network. Sheffield Hallam University


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course, learners included such things as planning and structuring writing, consideration of audience, vocabulary extension, effective description and communicating meaning, all of which are vital to the writing process.


There is, in my view, so much more to literacy than functionality. I confess to finding the Functional Skills exams mildly depressing, focusing as they do on writing letters to the council about broken paving slabs or finding a pest control company to eliminate cockroaches, important though these things might be. What is so exciting about teaching creative writing is


that, despite the need to meet set learning outcomes, it does not for the most part feel like merely an academic exercise designed to measure a learner's ability or increase their employability, however that may be interpreted.


Overwhelmingly, women come onto the creative writing course with something they want to say. Sometimes it takes them several weeks to work out what it is, and occasionally they say it before they are ready and then draw back because it is


simply too raw. But whether it is a poem or an autobiographical piece thinly disguised as a short story, what they write is self-generated, a statement they wish to make which often has great personal significance. It is my privilege to help them do that.


Yet these problems are far outweighed by the observed benefits. My intention here has been to highlight the 'soft skills' which the creative writing course builds, its therapeutic potential and its value in promoting writing beyond the classroom in a way Functional Skills in its utilitarianism never will.


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