Fri 20th Jan 2012 Posted by Sharon at 22.05
2011 has been another year of substantial growth with several new prisons joining us. We had our first sponsored event in the form of a chain gang walk across Dartmoor –our patron Terry Waite joined us for that –he’s game for anything! We have increased our online presence substantially and now have dynamic face book and twitter pages( my favourite posts are when parents tell us how much their children enjoyed the CDs). We are very relieved to have had a successful lottery bid, which starts this year and we are very grateful to the other grant making trusts and donors who are supporting us.
Lots of staff changes for 2012. After Christmas we had to say goodbye to Dawn, one of our staff and we wish her well for the future. So we are interviewing all next week to take on two new project workers. The standard of the CVs was so high –and we received so many –it is going to be so hard to choose. I must say a massive thank you to Tamsyn for collating all the CVS and sorting out the elimination process. We’re really excited about taking on new staff to help with our new projects which we are launching this year as a result of our successful lottery bid.
These projects include creating and implementing something for prisoners who have older children (approx 9+). For these children a bedtime story may not be appropriate and so we are looking at quizzes, games, challenges, memory books and other ideas that prisoners can personalise and send to their children. We are also working on some sort of reciprocal scheme whereby dad can send something to his child who then adds to it / answers it/ responds in some way and then sends it back. This ‘dialogue’ will help parent and child to interact more closely and work towards creating a shared experience. So if any of you have any ideas we would be pleased to hear them.
A couple of weeks ago one of our prisoner editors was released from Dartmoor. He
worked so hard when he was with us editing and producing other prisoners’ stories
for their children that we decided to employ him on a part time basis upon his release.
He is still on probation (with the probation service –not with us) so we had to
liaise with them about relaxing his probation conditions so that he has time to work
on the stories we email to him. He then does the audio editing ( deleting mistakes
and adding sound effects) and then e-
I am currently on a train on my way back from London (hence the chance to write this) after meeting with BBC Radio 4 about our appeal which will be going out in the summer. We are very lucky to have got through as they receive many hundreds of applications every year.
So 2011 was a good year and 2012 looks set to be exciting, eventful and successful. We will keep you posted.
Apologies for not having blogged in November and December but those Christmas months are so manic at our editing suites in Dartmoor prison, we barely have time to come up for air. So big thanks to Chris who has written the last two blogs and huge congratulations to him for winning the Talk Talk Digital Hero Award for the work he has done with us.
