Katharina Kubrick Joins Prose in Prison
As you are all probably aware, Prose goes into prison each week to carry out our Letters from Prison initiative. Last week we took a very special guest in with us.
Those of you out there that are film buffs will most likely know this lovely ladies’ dad. He was a film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, editor, and photographer. His most famous films included, The Shining, A Clockwork Orange, Lolita, and Full Metal Jacket to name a few. Yes! That’s right, we only took Stanley Kubrick’s daughter to prison with us!
Katharina is extremely successful in her own right, she stepped into the film industry full-time in 1976 to work in Ken Adam’s art department as an assistant on the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me during which time she was asked to design the teeth for the character Jaws! After this she worked with some of the best production designers on a series of movies and TV commercials in a variety of different roles. She worked on many high-profile films, including Midnight Express, Moonraker, The Muppet Movie, Saturn 3, The Shining, Sphinx, The Dark Crystal, and Supergirl.
Since then, Katharina has spent her time painting and creating bespoke jewelry. Which is beyond beautiful. We’ll leave the link to her website here. So, I hear you ask, why on earth is Katharina visiting prison with Prose? Well, given her love of art, and our love of philanthropy, (which we love almost as much as words themselves), we asked Katharina if she’d like to come in with us and spend some time in the art department teaching the residents her methods. She was anxious at first, just like we were, we all have so many preconceptions about prison from TV and film, which on the whole are mainly wrong. So Katharina agreed to visit and see for herself what we were raving about.
It was clear to see beforehand how nervous she was, but when the afternoon was over, she was as pumped and excited about it as we have been and still are. She had the gentlemen eating out of the palm of her hand!
Katharina kindly agreed to an interview with one of the prison residents, that she enjoyed very much. To be given that opportunity as an inmate is incredible! Keep an eye out for that interview in the coming weeks.
Every two-weeks, Katharina will be joining us in prison. An initiative that joins art and words for the rehabilitation of offenders.
The art department is something you have to see to witness how much talent is currently behind bars in our correctional facilities. Last week we visited the male art department, there were incredible biro drawings, paintings, and something entirely unique sat in one of the offices.
A dragon, so detailed, sat on a wooden board. This wasn’t any ordinary dragon though, this fire-breathing creature was made out of soap!
The female art department focuses on making greetings cards, jewelry, and recycling old books into birdhouses, vases, and flowers. All of which are sold throughout the U.K to buy further materials to allow these residents to be creative.
We were also shown around two wood workshops within the prison last week, both of which blew us away.
Most offenders enter prison with no skills or qualifications, and HMP Peterborough takes each individual, assess them, and builds them back up again by giving them the opportunity to learn new skills.
The workshops are perfect examples of this. Carpentry is a specialist field, ask us to make a photo frame with perfect joins and we’d quiver in the corner of the room. Ask the gentlemen to do it and you’ll have a photo frame made out of four different joins in each corner.
From there, we saw coat stands, chairs made out of pallets, storage boxes, and planters. All of these are finished to an extremely high standard, and will eventually be sold to the public to allow the residents to earn enough to buy more materials.
We hope you agree that HMP Peterborough is doing so much good for the lives of their residents, creating opportunities that most of them would never have had otherwise. Kudos to their education department, and all of the staff that believe in rehabilitation.
Do you have a talent within the arts? Drama, music, writing, art? Do you have a spare two hours that you could donate to changing the lives of offenders? Get in touch with us right here.
Related
Originally published at blog.theprose.com on June 22, 2016.
