The Transformative Way
For workshop information: prison facilitator, prisoners, addiction centres, secure facilities, mental health, psychiatric institutions and hospitals please see contact details.
‘The Transformative Way’ presents 52 ‘tried and tested’ workshop-resources based on years of experience by Pamela Brown, Pearson Award winning Facilitator and Lecturer in Creative Writing. The resources are proven to empower prison-writers throughout the textbook, outlining the dynamic practically of ‘The Transformative Way’. The dynamic maximizes the ‘journey’ for the prison writer entering the workshop environment, combatting literacy issues (if any) and progressing while receiving validation. The ‘creative journey’ is achieved through gaining independence as a creative thinker and writer. Shadowing the textbook, Brown relates, ‘are those whom I have witnessed making a successful rehabilitation with family, society, relationships and the workplace: this is breakout, breakthrough and real release as their earlier previous release into creativity.’
The 52 resources are grounded in Brown’s vast background projected onto the genre of prison literature—a tradition that encompasses centuries of writing. The textbook includes samples and examples from every genre with discussion of classics such as ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’, ‘Lifer’, ‘Borstal Boy’, ‘Pain of Confinement: Prison Diaries’ and American poet, Jimmy Santiago Baca’s ‘A Place to Stand’.
The textbook makes the case for wider acknowledgement of the prison writing and literature genre within the academy related to psychology, law, criminology and ‘post trauma individuation’. The psychological aspect indicates directions for development during what is ‘an emergency situation’ as the participant in workshops moves transitionally into the post traumatic state and their writing comes to fruition. The process can bring about post traumatic resolutions, visible for the writer through what is produced. Crucially, creative writing has delved into the conscious and subconscious and sign posts The Transformative Way. ‘Individuation’ as explored by modern psychology, psychoanalysis, and group psychotherapeutic therapy is mirrored in the collective workshop process. In this zone, the prisoner is not solitary as when in the prison lockup. Prison-writing facilitators will identify with Brown’s background and engagement within creative writing as artistic discipline demanding education, talent, achievements, experience, and depths of knowledge vital to directing each workshop event, incident and outcome.
Pamela Mary Brown poet, author, performer, Writer-in-Residence HMP Magilligan; Editor Time In magazine; Co-Editor All In magazine; (former) Creative Writing Tutor-Assessor, North West Regional College; MA in Creative Writing (distinction)., Open University; BA (Hons.)., English Literature & Creative Writing, Teesside University; Extra-Mural Studies/Community Drama (with commendation), University of Ulster; Media Studies, Foyle Arts Centre, Derry. Pearson Silver Award for Further Education Lecturer of the Year (2023).