UTSA Arts launches citywide series on the impact of arts in prisons - UT San Antonio Today

Nearly half a million books will be distributed across prisons in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland this autumn, in a campaign backed by bestselling thriller writer Lee Child. The initiative, delivered by the Reading Agency charity as part of its Quick Reads programme, will see copies of 11 short books distributed, with titles selected with input from prisoners as well as staff. A book will be distributed to every cell across the prison estate, as well as stock sent to prison libraries. Child, the UK’s first prison reading laureate, said the initiative was intended to address the “revolving door” – people leaving prison but struggling to cope outside and returning to custody. “If we can stop one in 10 of those people from coming back, that would be a major achievement,” he said. “It would be good for society as a whole, not just for that individual prisoner and their future employer.”Ministry of Justice statistics for 2024-25 show that 65% of initial-assessment results across public prisons in England, based on tests taken when people entered custody, were at entry levels 1-3, below the standard expected of a typical GCSE student.

'The fair is proceeding as planned and final preparations are underway,' a spokesperson said. The post After Protests and Riots, Art Basel Readies Paris Show appeared first on Artnet News .

In August 2019, Omar Rajeh sat in his bedroom, listening to the sound of pounding percussion with his world in crisis. In the midst of political instability, Citerne Beirut, a theatre and cultural centre Rajeh had founded in his native Lebanon, was forced to close, dismantled by order of the local government, who planned to build an incinerator on the site. Heartfelt … Omar Rajeh in Dance Is Not for Us. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/the GuardianRajeh tells us that as a teenager, coming of age at the end of the Lebanese civil war, dance had always seemed like the most revolutionary thing he could do. Now here he is, more than three decades later, still dancing – out of frustration, defiance, resistance and a desire to connect. As the percussive score gains momentum, Rajeh’s busy body builds up a sweat. In this danced stream of consciousness, Rajeh is not always an especially elegant mover, but he dances like it’s a necessary thing to do. Part of this year’s Dance Umbrella festival, Dance Is Not for Us is a solo that appears at times like an explosion of physical instinct, but it is mostly calm, considered musings on the nature of choreography, with all its workings exposed.