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Description
DARREN RAYMOND knows what a powerful effect the arts can have on people's lives.
While serving a sentence in Brixton Prison, London, in 2003, he went along to a drama class. 'I found myself playing silly games, and wondered what I had put myself into,' he told a group at the Renewal Arts Forum at the Initiatives of Change centre in Caux, Switzerland, this summer. 'But after about an hour of the class I thought, "Wow, I've forgotten I'm in prison". No one was treating me as a prisoner; I was being treated as an equal, as an artist. It was a turning point for me as a person.'
Raymond, now a professional actor, goes back into prisons to run workshops on Shakespeare--and says that participants frequently end up writing sonnets in their first session. 'Shakespeare's themes are universal,' he says. 'A lot of prisoners have pent-up anger and frustrations. There's no better writer than Shakespeare to bring that to the fore.'
Raymond was one of several at the Forum whose personal experience illustrated its theme: 'Transforming the way things are'.
Pauline Warjri, a music teacher and composer from Northeast India, spoke of how, as a young person, 'I felt I was nobody until it came to piano and singing. Music was my home, music brought me into contact with people young and old.' She now lives in Bangalore, where she... |
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