Koestler announce venues for ‘100 Years On’
To commemorate the centenary of women’s suffrage, the Koestler Trust is producing an art trail of Koestler Award-winning artworks by today’s women prisoners.
The idea is simple but powerful: to exhibit 100 framed paintings, drawings, sculptures and poems by women in prison in important venues and public buildings throughout the UK. The trail will shine a light on women in prison 100 years on from the 1918 Representation of the People Act, which was preceded by a suffragette campaign that led to the imprisonment of many of its supporters.
The venues represent the many different spaces which touch the lives of women in prison today and touched those of the suffragettes 100 years ago and include:
- Old Bailey, London – where suffragettes and women today have faced trial
- St George’s Hall, Liverpool – the site of the first suffragette protest
- Houses of Parliament, London – offices of members of the Justice Committee, Baroness Corston and Lord Ramsbotham
- New Scotland Yard, London, as well as police commissioners and police stations
- The Pankhurst Centre, Manchester – birthplace of the Suffragette movement and now a women’s community centre
- Emily Wilding Davison Library, Royal Holloway University, Surrey – named after one of Britain’s most famous suffragettes, and Royal Holloway alumna, Emily Wilding Davison
- Headquarters of the prison services in England and Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.
- All the UK women’s prisons
Click here to see a full list of venues
Participating venues will each display one framed artwork either in private or public spaces.
Women’s voices, too often unheard or unheeded, sing out on this adventurous art trail by female prisoners. It’s wonderful for WOW [Women of the World] to be part of it.
– Jude Kelly, Artistic Director, Southbank Centre
The Koestler Trust is the UK’s best-known prison arts charity, working across the whole of the British criminal justice system – in prisons, secure hospitals, immigration centres, young offender institutions and in the community. The Trust runs the annual Koestler Awards to motivate people to participate in the arts, and to showcase the talent and potential of people in the criminal justice system to the public.
