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Guest blog by Martin Sommerville

Thank you so much for bringing the incredible carvings down to my workshop yesterday.

Still slightly reeling from having these extremely powerful pieces of art visit the studio.

Three soap carvings, from the archived collection at the national justice museum. Tiny talismanic creations, made by prisoner(s) unknown.

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These are objects carrying deep stories, history and feeling heaped so thick the weight was visceral.

Art made in stolen moments, from stolen pieces of the of machinery of confinement, tiny incised scratches betraying the hand of the maker trying to break out of something, making a new sense of the scentless prison soap.

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To me they speak to the human urge to process experience physically, whether we are handed the means and materials, or whether they are taken away. Things emerge in solitude, the elastic, elongated time spent inside, resonating with wartime bone carvings & sailors scrimshaw. Tools, artist, medium all flow into each other in a slow motion meditation, ingenuity born out of the drive toward survival, or its opposite. Another resonance: the soap being a way to clean things up, to wash away, scrub and scour... how many masterpieces we're sacrificed as suds down the drain?

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So many more layers to feel, to put back together: it would be interesting to trace the pattern on the back of the fragments, find out when the soap was manufactured... Analyse the carving marks to see if the same person made each one... Were they developing a style, a story, which was the first?

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None of that! Who ever made these was just passing time! Making their way! Trying. To. Get. By. Till. They. Get. Out.

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So, in short, it was pretty moving meeting these things!

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thank you Left Lion magazine for surprising me this morning, thanks Andrea Hadley-Johnson from National Justice Museum for sharing & @fabrice.gagos for taking pictures.

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Guest blog by work experience student Daniela

An inspiring week in the National Justice Museum

 My name is Daniela, I’m 18 years old and from Italy. I came to Nottingham to have a work experience in the National Justice Museum. At first, I didn’t know what I was going to do. It turned out to be a wonderful experience.

Day one

When I went into the National Justice Museum, I met Joanne Kingdom, the learning manager. She explained me how the museum works, its rules and other useful things. Then we went into a room, where I met Andrea Hadley-Johnson and Simon Brown. Andrea is the artistic program manager of the museum and Simon is the project curator. They were leading a creative brainstorming session about ‘constriction and restriction’. In 2020 there will be an exhibition of constricting objects and they were gathering information and impressions from the staff.

Later Andrea gave me 4 photos of women in prison dating back from the late 1800 to the 1970s. In one picture, women were doing the laundry. In another, women were going gardening. The third picture showed women making jam and the last photo showed a woman in a prison cell feeding her son. These were very interesting photos. Andrea told me to search information about women in prison, the activities they do in female prisons in England.

In the afternoon I went on a tour of the museum with Andrea and a group of women from an organisation supporting vulnerable people. After the tour, Andrea showed them the pictures of women living in prison and asked them to write their comments and impressions. Working closely together to ensure we understand and represent a diverse range of voices

Day two

In the morning I met Andrea and she showed me the comments of the women that she gathered the day before. I transcribed them on a word document so that they can be easily found.

After that, Andrea asked me to do an “object walk”, a walk through the museum, where I asked people what they think about the object (in this case, women’s photos). I walked around the museum asking people what they think about the photographs and then I asked them to write their impressions and thoughts on a paper. This activity is aimed to have a feedback from the visitors, to understand better their point of view and their interests. Later, I transcribed the answers of the visitors on a word document.

One of the scopes of my work experience was to devise a project space activity about the images I have been working on. I started to write down some ideas. I thought that an interesting and fun activity to do was to stick some balloons on the pictures and transform them in comics. I started printing some balloons and I tried to put them on the pictures. The result was good, so I showed it to Andrea, and she loved it.

In the afternoon, I followed Simon, who was going to a conference call with Amy, the visitor attraction manager. They had a call with an audience finder. It was quite interesting to understand how data are collected and how they are used. The National Justice Museum collects visitors’ data to understand better the income, the needs of the visitors and what needs to be improved. I didn’t understand everything they said because they used specific terms and talked quite fast, but I tried!

Day three

On Wednesday I continued developing the project activity. I added some icons besides the balloons, so that visitors can make the pictures look more contemporary. I did some tries, to see how the result could be. I’ve really enjoyed working on this project, because I could express myself and play with History.

After lunch, I had the chance to participate in a workshop guided by Nisa Khan, a performance artist. Andrea invited her to co-design a workshop with her to feed the ‘ constrictions restrictions’ exhibition, it was about making knots in a repetitive way, so that we could understand better forced works. Unlike prisoners, we had fruit juice. It was a cosy ambient where you could relax and make knots with strangers. It was a cool experience that I’ll never forget.

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A snap shot of the 'Make it Yours' workshop with performance artist Nisa Khan. One of a sequence of workshops we're coproducing with creative practitioners. Testing and trialling ways to offer the museum collection as a source of inspiration. Creating a friendly free space for togetherness. Thank you as always to the wonderful people joining us on this journey

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share the constraints you'd like to be free of in your life...

Responses to this question will help shape and inform an exhibition. Thank you 👊👊🏽👊🏿

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This tiny, charismatic key was crafted from a bed spring, by a prisoner. It fits within the palm of my hand, fragile but solid. I can comfortably close my fingers around it and the key is hidden. Cold hard metal bound with soft cotton. The delicacy and assertiveness of this key has captivated my imagination and woven itself into the activity plan for the museum. The ingenuity and intention of the person who crafted it is playing on my mind. Andrea H-J