Serco deliver the Education and Learning services at HMP Dovegate with a special focus on art classes. One resident of the Therapeutic Community at HMP Dovegate has shone out as “one to watch” within the arts community. Following encouragement from his Serco Art Tutor, he has had various pieces of his artwork published and has also won numerous awards through the Koestler Trust, the art awards scheme for offenders, secure patients and detainees. By entering the Koestler Awards entrants can gain recognition for their achievements, get feedback on how to develop their creative work and gain motivation to work to a deadline. Many entrants use Awards or sales money to buy further arts materials or pay for courses.

He said: “I discovered purely by accident that I could paint while I was in prison. Nobody has ever taught me to paint it just sort of happened one day, something that was always there but I never knew I had. I was in the art room and the art tutor gave me some paints. I told him that I couldn’t paint, that I’d never done it before yet when I picked up the brush, it was as though I’d been painting all of my life.

I paint in my cell in the evenings and in the art class during the day, where I help out as a teaching assistant as my prison job. I buy all of my own materials out of my prison wages through mail order, in fact all my wages go on art materials.

Since taking up art in prison, I have gone on to get a degree in fine art, I’ve won the Boundary art prize for figurative art and last year I entered the Koestler Awards for the first time. I won three platinum awards, one gold award and first and second prize for the visitors’ choice award. I got hundreds of feedback cards saying I should take up art as a profession. This is what I’d love to be able to do for a living upon release."