Meet the team
Sarah Turvey
Advisory Group member
I am co-founder and Director of Prison Reading Groups (part of registered charity Give a Book) www.prisonreadinggroups.org.uk For most of my career I taught English Literature at the University of Roehampton. My academic research into the pleasures and benefits of reading groups led to the founding of PRG in 1999. The aim was to set up, fund and support informal reading groups in prisons. In 2017 I left the university to work full-time with PRG. We currently support 110+ groups in more than 80 prisons. We also run family reading and writing initiatives in more than 60 prisons.
PRG believes the arts enable connection, self-expression and agency. Our groups are voluntary and open-ended, and they prioritise pleasure, choice and independent ideas. They also help overcome the damaging isolation that prison can lead to and encourage prisoners to discover or re-discover a positive sense of self on which to build.
PRG has long experience of negotiating the changing landscapes of prisons across the estate. In our view the success of arts interventions depends on collaborative working, which is why the NCJAA is so important.
I am delighted to have been appointed to the advisory board and I look forward to helping raise awareness and support for the vital work of the arts in prisons.
In 2023 I was awarded an OBE for services to prisoners.