Unheard Voices

UNHEARD VOICES

“I’ve not just seen these paintings but I’ve lived in them.” – HMP Deerbolt Learner

Unheard Voices is a collaboration between The Bowes Museum, Novus and HMP Deerbolt, facilitated by artist Jonah York using the museum’s exhibitions and collections to engage young male learners in a custodial setting. With both institutions located less than two miles apart, the project creates meaningful connections between place, people and collection.

Kith & Kinship

‘The first phase of Unheard Voices was inspired by The Bowes Museum’s highly acclaimed and thought-provoking exhibition, Kith & Kinship: Norman Cornish & L. S. Lowry. Works by two of the greatest northern artists of 20th century depict the vivid realities of Cornish’s Spennymoor life and Lowry’s industrial views. Both artists had a deep understanding of humanity, and this connection to honesty, reality and expression resonated with unspoken experiences of those living within the walls of HMP Deerbolt today.

Through a series of creative workshops led by creative practitioner, Jonah York, learners discussed artwork from the exhibition they resonated with, sketched, and reflected through letters to themselves, their families and support networks. Responding to ideas of community, identity, and place, Unheard Voices has allowed young male adults impacted by the justice system to reshape the conversation about them through these iconic works, offering new and personal interpretations.

Over 15 male learners from HMP Deerbolt worked to create a zine and soundscape. In their words, it captures their “unheard voices”, “the voices people choose not to hear”. Using The Bowes Museum’s collection and upcoming exhibitions as a way of embedding literacy into artistic exploration, learners have been empowered to express themselves and engage with their peers, families, and the wider community while gaining crucial educational and life skills.

Through this project, the museum is providing a platform for voices of today to resonate with the art of the past, creating a narrative around place, hope and aspiration.

“…after all, we are all the victors, or victims, of life’s experience….” – Norman Cornish

Bringing The Bowes Museum to HMP Deerbolt

Through generous funding from The John Horseman Trust, The Bowes Museum’s (TBM) has been able to build on its initial pilot with HMP Deeerbolt, through ‘Unheard Voices 2.0’.

More than 80 objects from the museum’s collection were taken into the prison and were handled, debated and reinterpreted through shared conversation. Working collaboratively, learners selected objects from the museum’s collection for display, decided how they should be shown and identified links between them. Themes emerged around identity, childhood, illusion, travel and the human urge to collect and make meaning.

This served as the basis to create a learner-led pop-up exhibition outside the Library in the Novus Learning Centre at Deerbolt. Within an adaptable exhibition model, learners selected items for display and wrote interpretation panels under the theme of ‘Time’. In the entrance of The Bowes Museum sits the Conversation Wall, displaying the co-creation for visitors to reflect on the learner’s chosen themes and the process that shaped them.