I taught art in a high-security prison – Waiting for the Out took me straight back to my classroom
Watching Waiting for the Out, the BBC’s flagship new drama series, transported me straight back to my classroom in HMP Wakefield in the mid-1990s. This decaying Victorian building at the heart of a challenged city in the north of England is one of the UK’s ten category-A, high-security prisons for men. Many inmates are on life or whole-life sentences.
I was a naive, young graduate from Yorkshire with limited teaching experience, no teaching qualification and certainly no knowledge of prison education. I was looking to fund my part-time PhD – a qualification that was becoming the prerequisite for employment in universities.
Teaching art and the humanities at HMP Wakefield changed my life, making me the educator and campaigner I am today. As the publicity for Waiting for the Out says: “Freedom isn’t always on the outside.”
This refers to the mental health challenges of the main character, Dan (Josh Finan), a philosophy teacher in a category-B prison somewhere in London, and also his students (men both outside and inside the prison walls). But it also speaks directly to what I came to realise about the power of art education.
In an excruciating but true-to-my-experience dinner party scene, Dan is questioned about why he teaches in a prison. He challenges the other guests’ naive assumptions based on the fact he is a “nepo baby” of former prisoners in his family – his father, uncle and brother. The party concludes that all he does is provide a “two-hour holiday in [the inmates’] heads”.
While this might be seen to dismiss the usual rehabilitative justifications for prison teaching, it is the most accurate description I have yet come across. This series is based on the real-life experiences of a prison educator – Andy West’s 2022 memoir The Life Inside – and it shows.
As a woman teaching in Wakefield – a prison that has been the subject of tabloid speculation due to the infamy of some inmates and the nature of the men’s crimes – I was and still am asked to defend my decision to work there. For many of my students, the only freedom to think critically for themselves, and to develop the communication, analytical and life skills needed for release, was in that prison classroom.
What I learned, and what we see in this drama, was the impact of background. I was a “nice middle-class girl”, brought up in a small Yorkshire town and educated at a good comprehensive school. Some of the men I was teaching, like those in the drama, had not had an education at all. They had learned behaviour in their homes and on the streets that contributed to them being in a category-A prison by the age of 18.
This is not to excuse their crimes – we were required to constantly remind ourselves of these as a protection from manipulation and influence – but to acknowledge the potential of lifelong access to education, even for prisoners.
As the dinner party conversation emphasises, educators cannot “save” inmates and will fail if they try. They just need to teach and (as the classroom scenes often show) challenge their students carefully, ask questions and laugh. I learned that humour was a key way to diffuse difficulties and build trust. I was also aware of my role in changing some of my student’s assumptions about women, as is illustrated carefully and thoughtfully in this drama.
The experience of learning how and why we teach art history, art and the humanities in that prison classroom has driven my work ever since. Thirty years on, as a professor of art history who spends much time battling to enable access to my subject, I found Waiting for the Out speaks directly to the importance and power of teaching.
As the series demonstrates, illiteracy levels are incredibly high among the prison population. As the story of Dris (Francis Lovehall) illustrates, to be unable to read is both humiliating and disabling for men wanting to improve themselves and their relationships with their children while inside.
I will never forget the moment when one of the men in my basic skills class was asked by a prison officer why a painting we had been exploring in class was “impressionist”. His historically driven, thought-provoking response clearly demonstrated the power of art history to build confidence in communication, offer different ways of thinking about the world, and generate different types of conversation between guard and inmate.
Jane Featherstone, the executive producer of Waiting for the Out, sent West’s book to the programme writers. She has spoken of investing in [“visionary story tellers”](https://www.sister.net/about/jane-featherstone “) and has campaigned for better arts education in UK schools, describing the lack of culture in the national curriculum in 2017 as "a deprivation of opportunities for children to reach their full potential as human beings”.
This drive to invest in stories about education that makes a difference has also led her to fund Featherstone Fellowships at the University of Leeds, for art teachers from across the UK to do research that demonstrates the power of art education.
With Waiting for the Out, Featherstone has produced a TV drama that focuses deeply on the power of teaching the arts and humanities in prisons. The fact it does this while also exploring mental health, misogyny, gender politics and the impact of family and social contexts shows the importance of the classroom as a space to potentially influence change.
Watching Waiting for the Out brought back memories for me – but it also spoke to the fundamental need to empower teachers and enable education for all. This incredible drama demonstrates why access to arts education matters, even for those who society wants to forget.
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Abigail Harrison Moore has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Research England. Art Teachers Connect is delivered in partnership with the Paul Mellon Centre.