FAQ: The value of art professionals

21 July 2010
Why pay arts professionals instead of using volunteers to deliver the arts in prisons?

The information provided here reflects the views of Arts Access Aotearoa. It is based on dialogue with prison art tutors, programme managers and volunteer co-ordinators. 

Practising or exhibiting artists, arts writers, curators or educators in paid employment as prison art tutors to deliver arts programmes in prisons are usually men and women able, equipped and inspired to work with the different thinking and needs of prisoner art-makers.

Through their training and experience in their chosen artforms, professional artists are able to understand and engage the diverse creative aesthetic of prisoners – whether they are art-makers or not.

Using their arts networks, they are able to influence the ongoing dialogue for the place of prison art within established arts communities and networks in New Zealand.

As a result of their collective experience and skill, this group of prison arts tutors are likely to engage with the Department of Corrections’ long-term rehabilitative vision of the arts as a tool of change for prisoners.

This group of paid specialists have the expertise to locate, challenge and develop the thinking and  inner life of prisoners, using the arts as a tool within that process.