Just The Tonic, Series 1, Episode 8: Rehabilitation

Introduction (0:00)

[Music]

0:00 “My New Year’s resolution is probably to practise more – but I think that’s everybody’s!”

[Music] [Applause]

0:12 Katie: Happy New Year, and all the very best for 2022! Any new resolutions yet? Will you stick to them? Easier said than done. I always promise I’ll do more piano practice – does it happen? Watch this space. Well, we’ve been asking members of The People’s Orchestra about their musical resolutions, and we’ll be hearing from them later.

0:29 Now, throughout this series of Just The Tonic with me, Katie Derham, we’ve been shining a light on leading musicians and musical organisations who are dedicated to making a positive impact on people’s lives. In this, the last episode of the first series, it is all about rehabilitation. I’ll be finding out about the fantastic work of Changing Tunes, a charity that works in the prison system to help people get their lives back on track through the power of music.

0:59 Cam Harper: Ultimately, we look at prisons as these dark, scary places that we don’t want to look at too much. There are people in there that we’ve perhaps forgotten about, and I think that any kind of reaching out and sharing – particularly of a medium like music, that can be so embracing of people – is vastly important.

1:18 Katie: And I’ll be chatting to the celebrated multi-award-winning film-maker, criminologist and all-round Renaissance man Roger Graef about Feltham Sings, the documentary he made in Feltham Young Offenders Institution, and about his decades of campaigning for and supporting music in prisons.

1:38 Roger Graef: All these tough guys who were showing off to each other suddenly were touched by this middle-aged stranger’s lament for his wife. And that’s what music can do.

TPO members' musical resolutions (1:50)

1:50 Katie: First, though, we asked members of The People’s Orchestra what musical resolutions they have for 2022, and here is what they said.

1:57 “My musical New Year’s resolution is to actually have some time to practise. I’ve just completed my PhD, and that kind of saps the life out of you, so I’m looking forward to getting my life back and having some time to practise in the evenings after work.”

2:10 “I think my wish would be to become a better player, and to play every note rather than just some of the notes! Sometimes I’m a little bit quiet because I’m not sure what I’m doing, but I’m getting there, I suppose.”

2:23 “My New Year’s resolution is probably to practise more – but I think that’s everybody’s.”

2:28 “My personal musical wish is to stop having imposter syndrome and get in control of my self-esteem, because I have a lot of people telling me I can play and that I’m a good player, but I just really don’t believe it. And I’ve got to stop being so impatient with my practice, because I practise every day, and when I get a new piece of music I expect to be able to play it first time, which is utterly ridiculous. So if I do have to make a musical resolution, it’s to stop setting myself ridiculous challenges, and start believing I can play, and I can play well. So fingers crossed, I’m going to work on that.”

3:05 “I think my music wish for next year would be to carry on making music live with other people – in the orchestra and with ensembles – and bring the music to the people at live events.”

3:17 “My music wish is that our orchestra grows a bit more. We’ve grown in the clarinets, but we need a few more strings, and a few more players in other parts of the orchestra. And my resolution would be to practise a lot more. So: practice, practice and more practice.”

3:33 Katie: And that will stand them in very good stead for their music festival, which forms part of the cultural celebrations for the Commonwealth Games, hosted by Birmingham this year. We look forward to bringing you more news about that.

Changing Tunes (3:47)

3:47 Katie: The three core values of the Commonwealth Games are humanity, destiny and equality, and these are values that are integral to the work of Changing Tunes, a charity that uses music and mentoring to help people lead meaningful, crime-free lives. They work in prisons, in young offenders’ institutions and in secure children’s homes across the UK, employing musicians in residence in long-term residencies, and they work in the community too, providing support and opportunities for people when they leave the prison system. They have had what can only be described as extraordinary success, so we were delighted to catch up over Zoom with Changing Tunes’ chief executive, David Jones, and with musician in residence and service manager at Red Tangent Records, Cam Harper. Let’s hear from David first.

4:31 David Jones: We are working towards reducing reoffending, but actually we do that through a theory of change. The theory of change is about building people’s self-esteem and confidence, and improving people’s ability to work with one another. And we do a lot of work around identity – challenging the identity of being seen only as a product of the crime that saw them land in jail. Through music, if you can perform in front of your peers, if you can play within a group, you take on a different kind of identity. We do a lot of work through performance, and also recordings. Again, if you can send a loved one an MP3 or a CD of a song that you’ve written or performed on, that does an amazing thing for your identity. You’re not just a criminal, or an ex-prisoner – actually, you’re a musician, you’re a performer, you’re an artist.

5:20 And that, along with the self-esteem and confidence stuff, we’ve seen – particularly in our post-release work – can have a really powerful impact on reducing people going back to crime. To give you a couple of stats: the national average is that about 48% of prison leavers will reoffend within a year, and our reoffending rate is 3%. That’s over a three-year average as well. It clearly works. We’re extraordinary value for money – to fund the arts would take a fraction of what it costs to keep people inside. But unfortunately there’s not the recognition at a strategic level of the importance of the arts. There are individual governors who get it, and really push and enable our work and others like it, but unfortunately not at a ministerial or senior level.

6:10 Katie: With such a low reoffending rate among participants, it is clear that Changing Tunes has a considerable impact on the people they work with. And you don’t have to have previous experience of making music to get involved.

6:20 David: We will work with anyone. We work in all categories of prison, and with all types of offenders – male and female, adults and young people. And yeah, we will take people who’ve never picked up an instrument, through to people who may have had professional careers as musicians. In prison, we meet all kinds of people. So we’re very much learner-led. It’s not a specific programme where we move people from point A to point B; it’s very much “what do you want to get out of music?” Some people will come to us and say, “I’ve always wanted to play that song on the guitar”, and we can support that. Some people might come to us with a whole fistful of lyrics that they’ve written in their cell, and say, “can you help me turn this into a song?” Others maybe played an instrument when they were young and haven’t picked it up again for 10 or 15 years, but they’ve still got that love – so we can get them back in front of a drum kit, or in front of a keyboard, or whatever it might be. So yeah, we’ll take anyone, at any standard.

7:27 Katie: Cam Harper is a service manager at Changing Tunes’ record label, Red Tangent Records, and he works with prisoners post-release. Here he is on how he became involved with Changing Tunes.

7:37 Cam Harper: I was a serving prisoner when I came across Changing Tunes. I was an exception, possibly, in the sense that I’d been a musician for many years before I came across Changing Tunes. But seeing the work they did, and seeing the humanity and the positivity that they brought – that was what stuck in my mind, and I went, “oh, actually, this is a path for me. I can help to do this, and I can help to support people.” That was the positivity for me, directly from Changing Tunes: being able to engage, and go, “OK, yes – this is an amazing use of music, an amazing way to engage people. I’m in. Give me as much as I can get.”

8:20 And there is plenty going on. Throughout Changing Tunes’ prison work there are fairly regular concerts that happen with the guys inside, performing to other prisoners and prison staff. I’ve been a part of several concerts within the prison setting, and they’re always an amazing experience – both to get to perform, and to see other people performing and feeling the benefit, and the respect that they get from the guys around them. Because it isn’t an easy skill to master anyway, never mind in the environment of a prison. There are lots of talented people in prison, which is a terrible waste.

9:00 And in the prison system in general, there isn’t a lot to inspire hope and motivate you. So to see Changing Tunes crop up, and put on concerts, and see people engaged and motivated… I’ve had people come up to me: “How do I get involved? What do I do?” And I’ve seen many people, over the course of years, work with Changing Tunes inside, and then continue to work with Changing Tunes outside. I’ve been very, very lucky in the sense that I’ve ended up employed by Changing Tunes.

9:35 David: Cam’s actually being remarkably modest. Cam is a phenomenal musician. He came out of prison, stayed in touch with us, immediately began volunteering for us and supporting us, and later on we were able to take him on as a staff member. And what he then went on to do was have an amazing idea around making the most of that talent he talks about in prison. Cam set up something called Red Tangent Records, which is a record label run by people with lived experience, for people with lived experience of the prison system. That’s all Cam’s brainchild, and comes from his time inside – recognising and seeing the talent, and saying: well, look, having a conviction, having spent time inside, is a huge barrier to all walks of life. We know that the music industry is a tough, tough business at the best of times, and that’s without the baggage and the impact that prison has on people. So yeah, if you want to find out more, head over to redtangentrecords.com and find out a little bit more about some of our artists.

[Music]

10:55 Cam: Our first signing was a bunch of guys called Whack Therapists (spelling unconfirmed). They’re down in Exeter. They formed inside prison – a musician in residence from Changing Tunes is actually a member of the band now, officially. They’re a hip-hop crossover band – very, very talented guys, and they’re doing really well. They’re currently recording an album. Our next signing was Noble One BOF (spelling unconfirmed), a rapper from Brixton – a very, very charismatic guy, very talented rapper. Again, his mixtape is about to be released in January or February, and we’ll be pushing that as hard as possible.

[Music: track by Noble One BOF]

11:35 Noble in particular is comfortable talking about his journey through the prison system, and having grown up in those urban gang-culture areas, he’s very committed to challenging that and showing people that there are other platforms. This is a really nice opportunity for him to do that.

[Music]

12:00 Katie: A major event for Changing Tunes is their annual concert in the community – another opportunity to promote the musical talents of people when they leave the prison system.

12:08 David: It’s really got three objectives. One is to showcase our people, and to give a platform for our musicians – prison leavers and musicians in residence – to perform. One is about raising awareness. And it also has a fundraising element to it, as a small to medium-sized charity. It’s just a wonderful evening of music, and testimonies and stories. My chair of trustees always says, “you’ve got to see our work to believe it” – and as the vast majority of the work is inside the prison, seeing the work is quite difficult. Most people will never set foot inside a prison in their life. So to be able to bring that out and put it on in the community is really powerful. We do it once a year, and this year’s one was a hybrid, so it was great to get back to live music in front of a live audience, but we also did it as a live stream. If people want to see it, it’s still available on YouTube: go to the Changing Tunes channel, subscribe, and look for the 2021 concert. There’s an hour and a half of wonderful music and amazing stories.

13:10 Katie: And here’s Cam performing his song “Trust” at the Changing Tunes concert 2021.

[Music: “Trust”, performed by Cam Harper]

Why music in prisons matters (14:00)

14:00 Katie: Given the success of Changing Tunes, we asked David and Cam for their take on why it’s so important that access to music is widely available in prisons as part of the rehabilitation process. Here’s David.

14:14 David: Depending on what newspaper you read, or what media outlet you listen to, you’ll get a very different view on what prison is and isn’t. But let me tell you, as someone who has the genuine privilege of going in and out of prisons every other week and visiting many jails in the UK: prisons, on the whole, are a very dehumanising place. They’re a fairly awful place to be. And whilst there are great people working in our prisons who genuinely believe in rehabilitation, there’s not a huge amount of rehabilitation that is actually able to happen, because of a whole raft of things that we haven’t got time to go into today.

14:48 But an injection of music into those estates is a really amazing thing. It’s great for the staff and officers to hear music coming out of the wings and out of the chapels. It’s great for the individuals, as we’ve already discussed, and for many it can be the one thing that makes a difference in their sentence – rather than just treading water and waiting until release date, they can do something really productive. It’s also really, really good for supporting mental health – and mental health, particularly over the Covid times, has gone through the floor in our prisons.

15:20 There are phenomenal practitioners who are doing theatre, poetry, literature and all sorts in our prisons – a huge shout-out to all the arts-based practitioners in our jails who are doing amazing work. It adds a depth, it adds some humanity, as Cam referenced earlier, to what can be a really awful period in people’s lives. And it does just give a little bit of hope that they can come out the other side and survive their sentences – and, in the best cases, come out of them a changed person, better enabled to re-enter society. At the end of the day, I think the one thing we can all agree on is that we want to reduce crime. The best way to do that is to support people who, for whatever reason, have landed themselves in prison, so that they come out and don’t return. So arts is often a very small element of prison, but a really crucial one for some people.

16:20 Cam: First of all, I would say the arts – music in particular – I think everybody is touched by music in some way, whether that’s on a deep level or it just gets your body moving. Music is engaging, and the therapeutic benefits of music are unquestionably there. I get therapy from writing music; I get therapy from listening to music. It’s a kind of aural empathy, almost.

16:48 In terms of why they’re important in prisons: the arts are about connecting emotionally – internally, and one person to the next. And I think the issue around prison is that, ultimately, we look at prisons as these dark, scary places that we don’t want to look at too much. But in reality, what a prison is, is just a massive building full of people. There are people in there that we’ve perhaps forgotten about in some ways. And I think that any kind of reaching out and sharing – particularly of a medium like music, that can be so embracing of people – is vastly important.

Roger Graef (17:35)

17:35 Katie: Thank you very much. Someone who feels equally strongly that the arts are a key part of the rehabilitation process is the hugely respected criminologist, theatre director, documentary film-maker and BAFTA Fellow Roger Graef. I’ve known Roger for many years – he is a dear friend, and a mentor of mine. Many of his award-winning films have been instrumental in the reform of the justice system. It’s a cause he is passionate about, but music has always been a very important part of his life too, and it recurs as a theme in his work. He produced the groundbreaking Feltham Sings documentary. It was filmed in Feltham Young Offenders Institution, and inmates and staff offered a glimpse into their lives within the walls of the prison, and in some cases outside too. But instead of contributors simply telling their stories, they were given the opportunity to sing, rap and quote poetry about their feelings, their lives and their dreams. It was extremely powerful, and it won a lot of prizes too. I caught up with Roger over Zoom, and he began by telling me about a music programme that took place in a detention centre.

18:46 Roger: There were several musicians in the room doing a two-day workshop, writing songs with these people who were in total limbo. They weren’t convicted of anything, but they were waiting to be thrown out of the country, and it could have been anything from the next day to five years. That is what limbo looks like. They were from all over the world. There were these really big Rasta types in the doorway, not sure whether they should join in or not – because these weren’t cells; they have rooms where the doors are open, because they’re not convicted – and they were listening to the music, and finally they were lured in, and they wrote a rap song, and it was really very good.

19:28 And at the other end of the room was a very quiet, middle-aged Latino guy, who was working with one of the musicians, writing the song that he wanted to write about his wife, who he hadn’t seen for a long time. And after these gang-bangers finished, they said, “now it’s your turn, José”. And he sang this song about his wife, Adela, and it was a ballad. It makes me cry now to think about it. All these tough guys, who were showing off to each other, suddenly were touched by this middle-aged stranger’s lament for his wife. And it spoke… You can see its effect on me – but then I’m a sucker, I’m a softy. But these were tough guys, and they were melted by this fella’s very rough ballad, which he had just written. And that’s what music can do. It can change people’s lives by opening up that part they’ve kept locked, maybe even since they were children – because very often they come from violent, abusive childhoods, and music never plays a part in that, unless it’s to drown out the pain.

20:40 Katie: How were you first involved in realising that you could help people in this way? What was the moment of revelation for you, when you thought, “this is a tool that we can use to help people in prisons”?

20:50 Roger: Well, I’ve always loved music. I played five instruments, badly, and really understood the power of music, and because of that it was in my toolbox, if you like, for communication. And also, I had been a director of plays for nine years before I started documentaries, so I could understand where the space was in the human psyche that you can touch with art – whether it’s music, drama, painting, whatever it is. And having understood that in my own life, when I started making films about the police, and then in prisons, I saw these people who were, as it were, just like everybody else, but who had ended up there, and I thought: what they need is art – music and art.

21:40 Arthur Koestler and David Astor had started the Koestler Trust, for art in prisons, years before, and when I encountered it I just said, “right, I’m joining you – I’m going to do whatever I can to help”. I became a trustee of that. And then when I heard about the Irene Taylor Trust, it was exactly the same thing.

22:00 And I was going to make a documentary about Feltham. I managed to get access to the prison, and Peter Dale at Channel 4, who was the commissioning editor, said, “oh, we don’t want to hear a bunch of tough teenagers complaining about their childhood, just to be watched by Guardian readers and muesli-eating sandal-wearers” – I’m quoting now. He said, “I’ve got an idea: how about Feltham: The Musical?” He had made a film already – a wonderful film about alcoholism, with Simon Armitage and Brian Hill, which also won prizes – and I thought it was a brilliant form. So he said, “look, why don’t you get together with Simon and Brian and see if you can do Feltham: The Musical?” And I just laughed – I thought, good idea, why not? And I took it to the Home Office, and they laughed and said, “why not?” And I took it to the governor and the deputy governor, and they laughed and said, “why not?”

22:55 So with the improbability as our driver, we recruited both officers and young offenders to join. And what was brilliant about the form was that we decided together that first we would do a whole series of interviews on camera about their lives – that was fine, that was conventional documentary stuff – but that would be converted by Simon Armitage into lyrics. And then the composer – Errollyn Wallen (Roger isn’t sure of the name in the interview) – wrote the music in each contributor’s own style. It wasn’t that the composer wrote their own music; they wanted to find out what each contributor would like. And so suddenly these guys were choosing how they would present themselves, and their lives, to the world, with these specially written lyrics and this specially written music.

23:55 And there were two important stories that came with this. One was when I was being escorted by a prison officer to the gate after he’d watched the recording. He said, “you know, it’s very interesting what this stuff does. I was on night duty quite recently, and one of the kids in your film did a drawing, because he found out it was my birthday. He did a drawing for my birthday – and no one’s ever done that for me before.” That was the prison officer, right? And that was the same experience for the prisoners: to have somebody listen to their story.

24:30 Which is even more interesting: there were two really tough guys who were in for aggravated assault – nasty characters, you can see them in the film – and they said, “listen, man, we don’t want some white guy writing about our lives. We’re geniuses too.” And so we said, “OK, fine, if you can do it”. And both of them sang rap songs that stole the film. It’s brilliant – I used it on my Desert Island Discs. It was really, really good: articulate, beautifully performed.

[Music: rap from Feltham Sings]

25:35 Katie: Phenomenal. I actually didn’t realise that he’d written that, because it is strikingly good. It’s sort of Lin-Manuel Miranda levels of rapping, isn’t it?

25:45 Roger: And that’s the point. The talent hidden in prisons is the great secret. These are people who are willing to take the risks that get them into prison – very often it’s a mistake, or a betrayal, or even just a mistake by the justice system – but there they are, stranded.

26:05 A friend of mine has made a wonderful film that was repeated last month, called Painting with My Hair (title unconfirmed). It’s on BBC Four, and I highly commend it to everybody – it’s on iPlayer. It’s about a guy who was in solitary for 24 years and learned to paint using his own hair as a brush, and melting down the colours of jelly babies and M&Ms for his colours. And he’s done brilliant, brilliant work, which had an exhibition at the Riverside. This film is by Mike Dibb, who did Ways of Seeing, and is a wonderful film-maker. When you look at that work and see how wonderful his gifts are, and how much he’s changed from an 18-year-old who took part in a robbery that went wrong… But he’s still inside. The parole board just turned him down two weeks ago, even though he’s turned into – he’s 60 – a gifted artist. Because the justice system is blinkered.

27:06 Now, I want to tell you another story. I went with the director of the Koestler Trust to see the head of regimes in the prison service, when Gordon Brown said he was giving £25 million for rehabilitation programmes. And we said, “right, that’s what we do”. We get there – Ken something, his name was, I can’t remember now – and the tiny little figure who was the head of the Koestler Trust, Dorothy (spelling unconfirmed), and I went and said, “right, this is what we do: we reach parts of prisoners that other things don’t reach, and they change their lives accordingly”. And he said – and I quote – “that sounds terrific. How many crimes have you prevented?”

27:48 I said, “sorry, could you ask that question again?” He said, “well, how many crimes have you prevented?” And I said, “well, I don’t know – we just know that they’re less likely to reoffend once they’ve discovered the power of art”. “Well, you have to tell us the number if you’re going to get any money, because the Treasury says you’ve got to prove the effectiveness of your programme in terms of crimes prevented.” And I said: “first of all, the idea of counting things that haven’t happened has a certain logical problem attached to it; and secondly, because this is over time, we don’t know”.

28:25 And one of the great things that the Irene Taylor Trust does is it has this Sounding Out programme for people when they come out of the Music in Prisons experience and leave prison, so they can carry on their relationship with music. They become workshop leaders themselves, musicians themselves; they start bands. And what Sounding Out does is give them opportunities for jobs, and for self-respect, and for self-expression other than the usual violent means.

28:56 Katie: So this is what was so impressive about Changing Tunes, of course: the fact that people who have come out of that programme have been staying in the music business. And I have to say, the reoffending rates they’re experiencing after Changing Tunes are startlingly good. Now, you mentioned the problems with measuring how many crimes are going to be prevented – we don’t really know. But reoffending rates are measured, and presumably with the charities you’ve worked with, you must have been able to see some results in that sense?

29:21 Roger: Definitely, no question. But then we know that even in prison, when they’ve done the five-day workshop, the number of adjudications – trouble with the staff – goes down. They’ve learned to cooperate; they’ve learned to trust each other. The one thing that goes when you walk through that door is trust. When the gates are slammed, you don’t trust anybody – anybody. So the idea of rebuilding trust, and some kind of sharing and cooperation, is fundamental.

29:46 Katie: What is your sense at the moment, Roger, of the willingness of the justice system, and the government in general, to support this evidently very powerful method of helping offenders?

29:58 Roger: Well, I think you can tell from the fact that music is being sidelined in the education system. When they say “we have to prioritise subjects”, the first one they mention going down the list is music, right? They don’t get the connection between music and mathematics, and thinking, and concentration, and all the other skills. It is terribly narrow, and it is driven by a false assumption that the public is so punitive that they think this is some kind of reward for bad behaviour. In fact, it’s the path towards rehabilitation and reducing reoffending. Of the seven pathways to reducing reoffending, two or three involve education, socialisation, family and trust, and employment – and all of these things are the benefits of working on music with other people.

Close (31:05)

31:05 Katie: Absolutely. With very many thanks to Roger Graef – always so inspirational to talk to. His excellent documentary about Feltham Young Offenders Institution is available to watch online; just search for Feltham Sings. Huge thanks to David Jones and Cam Harper from Changing Tunes, and to Cam, Whack Therapists and Noble One BOF from Red Tangent Records for their music. And last but certainly not least, thanks to the players, singers and staff from The People’s Orchestra.

31:39 Well, that is it from the first series of Just The Tonic. It has been a pleasure to give a platform to people and organisations all across the UK who are doing so much to enrich people’s lives through the power of music. We’ll be back in the spring with a new series, and we’ll be hearing more from The People’s Orchestra and their fantastic Commonwealth Community Music initiative, which is a six-month-long festival that’s going to take place in the run-up to and during the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham this year. So far, 52 organisations from 14 countries have signed up to be involved, so it all promises to be something very special. So do join me again in the spring.

32:15 In the meantime, thank you so much for listening. If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard, please do like and share the podcast on social media. You can find all the episodes from the first series on your favourite podcast app. And if we have inspired you to join a choir or a community orchestra or a band, search online for community arts organisations in your area, or get in touch with Arts Council England, the Arts Council of Wales, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland or Creative Scotland.

32:45 Just The Tonic with Katie Derham was produced by Jill Davis and is a Peanut and Crumb production, supported by The People’s Orchestra and Arts Council England.

[Music: “Trust”, performed by Cam Harper, over the closing credits]