I recently read an article about an ex-offender musician who volunteered to play for an absent chapel pianist during 18 weeks in prison. He wrote: ‘That single hour represented – by a mile – the happiest moment during a deeply unhappy period. ‘To perform music’ he said ‘and especially to sing together, is a fundamentally joyful activity which inspires hope, increases individuals’ confidence and helps build community through common endeavour’.
Edward Smyth went on to work for the Prison Reform Trust and chair a charity called ‘Sing Inside’ whose vision is to see opportunities for group singing in every prison in England and Wales. I went to hear all about it at a fund-raising event. I have worked with individuals who have worked in prisons. I know many dedicated prison officers work sacrificially in very challenging environments.
We regularly hear about the systemic crisis that our prison system is currently in, and maybe less frequently hear about the adverse experiences that so many of the nearly 100,000 individuals in our prisons have sustained prior to offending. I learned from Ted in that article that the noise level in prisons is very high. And if you are in prison for any length of time, you tend to speak loudly in order to be heard and you become less good at listening.
Apparently, studies have been made about the potential harm of intrusive and repetitive sounds in prisons on a person’s mind and sense of self. Those who are incarcerated for the crimes they have committed receive a message from society that we don’t want them, that they are put away out of sight and often out of mind. What studies such as: ‘Music of Incarceration’ highlight is that the living conditions where, as a society, we place perpetrators have the potential to do them further harm.
As someone who thinks deeply about trauma, I can imagine how surviving in such a hostile and intrusive environment is likely to create defensive survival strategies. When we are bombarded, any sensitivity and vulnerability parts get submerged inside. The prison environment damages people.
What is heart warming about the ‘Sing Inside’ project, as the founder explained, is the impact it has on participants. She has clearly thought much about the kind of environment that needs to be created as part of a singing project in a prison. Folk are welcomed, not judged and not stigmatised. In a prison your crime is ever before you, and you are deprived of the activities and joyful experiences that help re-charge, re-set and restore, things that are open to us in the outside world. You are stripped of your humanity in a place that bombards you and often derides you. A person’s well-being easily plummets in such a situation.
When resources are so sparse, it may seem that singing is a luxury. But I would say that singing is way more than the sum of its parts. Singing with others has the potential to work on many levels to counteract traumatising and damaging messages. Participants enjoy being part of something bigger than themselves, and being taken up by something interesting and challenging. It tests them in a safe space and gives them a sense of agency and creativity (both in short supply inside). Someone said that being in the group felt like they were being the best version of themselves.
I recently visited Aldeburgh in Suffolk, where the words taken from Benjamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes are part of a sculpture on a scallop shell: ‘I hear those voices that will not be drowned’. This opera tells the terrible story of a man who is scapegoated and unfairly treated in his community, a man who could in another story have ended up in prison.
It has long been my belief that those who suffer trauma often have cries that have been silenced deeply within themselves. One of the chapters in my book: 20 Ways to Break Free from Trauma (Chapter 14 – When we Cry out in Distress) focuses on this aspect of trauma. How wonderful it is that a singing charity has for ten years been supporting individuals to allow their voices to be heard and their sounds to be made and honoured. Thank you, ‘Sing Inside’, and happy 10th Anniversary!