AustLit

'The YWrite project investigates the role of creative writing in prisons through a state-of-the-art prison education program designed specifically for incarcerated women and children in the Northern Territory. The workshops teach incarcerated students how to express themselves through creative writing in various forms of prison prose, graffiti art, and storytelling. Graffiti constitutes a special genre of writing that has been deployed by prisoners to reflect on their circumstance, to protest their penal incarceration, or even to transform their understanding. Because "graffiti" remains unconstrained by traditional writing conventions (of spelling, grammar, and punctuation), such writing provides a space for resistant writers or those of lower literacy levels to write intuitively. A writer of graffiti can articulate messages with a sense of urgency, uninhibited by conventional expectations of normative writing. The aims of the project are to foster motivation and self-efficacy through creativity, which in turn can lead to improved self-image and reduced emotional stress, an increase in literacy, and more postrelease opportunities. A major outcome of the program will allow detainees to share their "stories" through the publication or exhibition of their work, which will in turn contribute insights for society's understanding of effective prison arts programs and the effects of writing to transform.' (Introduction)