A prison-made podcast - challenging identity through creative storytelling on radio. Radio Begijnenstraat is a structural drama project for & with (menatlly ill) offenders

Lohmann, K (Katrin)

Submission type

Oral and Poster

Scheduled

Poster, Beurs van Berlage , Grote Zaal

Kernwoorden

desistance, dramatherapy, mentally ill offenders

Onderzoeksgebied

Art & expressive therapies

Doelgroep

mensen met weinig ervaring met het onderwerp

Workshop

The project is rooted in the dramatherapy of the psychiatric ward of the Antwerp prison & also facilitates a possibility for ex-prisoners to engage. In weekly group & individual sessions participants are stimulated to read, dramatize, write & create fictional work or tell personal stories in order to produce material for our podcast. Creation, recording & editing is done under professional artistic guidance following the ideas, needs & capacities of the participants. Every 2 months the process results in a new radio show which is broadcasted on the local radio & online & incidentally in the cultural field. We collaboratively engage in a structural creative process in which we focus on autonomy, capabilities & strengths rather than on offending behaviour. The project is a powerful way to organize & communicate our inner world & connect to one-self & others. Through the radio we deal with self-view & self-consciousness in a special way: we re-listen, re-view & imagine ourselves in the ears of the other & recognize ourselves in other stories.That contributes to explore identity other than the criminal identity. Side-effects are a heightened self-esteem, contact, pleasure, personal growth, cultural participation & diversity in society.