Through the Blue was a showcase of artwork, music and writing made in criminal justice settings in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Surrey and entered into the 2025 Koestler Awards.
The exhibition was co-curated by a group of people on probation in Oxford and Reading, who considered more than 600 works made by people in prisons, young offender institutions, secure hospitals and on probation in the region, and selected around 70 for display.
The co-curators were drawn to intriguing works that resonated with their own experiences and reflected their varied creative interests. Boundaries and thresholds loomed large in their recollections of time in prison and are depicted in many of the exhibited artworks: walls, doors, windows, hatches. Means of containing, but also of seeing and moving through.
“I feel hugely privileged to have viewed the entries. It was like opening a treasure trove of talents.”
Exhibition co-curator
Together, the exhibited artworks explored the experience of navigating a way through obstacles, drudgery, sadness and towards freedom; and both the excitement and fear that prospect can inspire. Also on display was the potential for creativity to blur and breach these boundaries through works made to share with loved ones and to mark moments of humour and connection.
Many of the works dealt with light and dark, in and out, and the space and movement between these states. The colour blue, prominent in the selection and exhibition design, underscored this duality. While blue is associated with cold and melancholy, it is also associated with blue skies and sunny days. It is the frightening, unknown depths of the ocean and an expansive horizon, calm and full of possibility.
Crossing boundaries
Community philosophers Andy West and Kate Halliwell led two open, creative philosophy workshops on the 1st of March in the exhibition space, exploring the many roles boundaries play in our lives, responding to selected artworks from the exhibition.
Listen
Listen to the music that featured in Through the Blue.
Age recommendation: 18+ (May contain language some people might find upsetting)
Farmfield Hospital, Commended Award for Poem, 2025
What Have I Lost
What have I lost, what have I lost
I’ve lost my own freedom, but what was the cost.
It cost me my sanity but I was to blame
It’s cost me so much now, too much for me to name.
I feel like I’m winning though, I’m climbing that rope,
the one that has an end to it, shining with hope.
Believing in sunshine and stars in my sky
is helping me to focus as the time passes by.
I know time is ticking counting down all the years,
the gate is approaching, each day I see it through tears,
tears of regret, self-blame and remorse,
but I’ve lost all my hatred that was there at the source.
I’ve lost all the anger that I felt at the time,
the anger that drove me to committing a crime
I’ve lost all my thoughts of suicide and self-harm,
my thoughts are of home now, a healing warm balm.
I’ve been through the hard times, the rough and the tough,
I’m ready for home now, because I’ve had enough.
I try not to be paranoid
I try to fill this void
I need tissues
for my issues
I am broken
often numb
but I can still see the light
Stressed out
so many years
so many fears
my head is a mess
I overthink to the excess
often disconnected
from reality
My therapist tells me
to accept the past
and live in the present
She helped me repair
my self
I still have hope
I am my own arch enemy
and my own savior.
I carry all of this weight
and yes, I can still
see the light.
from the collection Poems from the Heart, HM Prison Send, Poetry Collection, 2025
from the collection Poems from the Heart, HM Prison Send, Poetry Collection, 2025
Grit
It is the grit of things
Which grabs us hard
The part that gathers
Under clawing nails
The collected detritus
In the toes of shoes
Our accomplishments and fails
The grit of things, a scattering
Of moments dire and perilous
A spatter of defining actions
And responses to events
Which do so labour us.
How we feel the crunch.
from the collection Greaves of Lass, HM Prison High Down, Silver Award for Poetry Collection, 2025
from the collection Greaves of Lass, HM Prison High Down, Silver Award for Poetry Collection, 2025
My Hypothesis
Whether this, their very own, or an instrument on loan, every inmate should be granted this good will: that if they’re a musician, or of such a disposition, they should be allowed an instrument in-cell.
My reasoning’s empirical, though I don’t predict a miracle, but only thing’s that some research has shown, that those with in-cell instruments create positive influence and ‘purposeful behaviour’ follows on.
So if you care to treasure it, your forensic folk can measure it, and watch recidivism in decline, for if you only measure this, consider my hypothesis and see far fewer back to do more time.
from the collection Neshi-Voh, HM Prison Send, Commended Award for Poetry Collection, 2025
from the collection Neshi-Voh, HM Prison Send, Commended Award for Poetry Collection, 2025
The Moment of, ‘I Am’
In a whispered stream hidden deep in ancient wood,
I’ll drape my feet in its cold embrace
sitting upon a granite seat crusted in moss
millions of years in the making.
Around me the persistent drone of industrious bees
intent only on their hive directive,
to gather nature’s gracious bounty
and bear it home to sustain the colony.
The woodland flora bust their moves
to the music in the breeze,
with ancient steps and timeless patterns
living and dying in seasonal rhythms.
Slowly my heartbeat synchronises,
re-connecting me to sacred space.
I am once again a part, not apart
And peace calms my racing mind.
Sweet scents of moss and bark remind me
of childhood adventures, vivid and wild,
camps in the woods, hidden from view,
safely enfolded by Mother Nature.
Overhead, the swallows weave impossible patterns
the dance of predator and prey,
hungry chicks are waiting, yellow mouths agape,
ready to receive the fruits of aerial endeavors.
The gentle low of domino cattle
their shiny black and white coats
a stark contrast to the vibrant green meadow
spiralling with Spring’s floral kaleidoscope.
The honeysuckle flowers offer me a gift
of sweet nectar, I suck the droplet from the flower
smiling in pleasure as the taste explosion
takes me deeper into this sensory immersion.
My senses heighten and align with this mystical space,
bringing in the tinkle of fairy laughter all around,
the sounds I loved as an innocent child
who still believed and played with the Fae folk.
Fully immersed, I am singularly at peace,
the stillness of myself radiates through me
allowing the essence of my true self the freedom
to be absolutely suspended in the moment.
In that moment I am vibrational energy,
I am the sparkle of sunlight on the water,
I am in the rhythm of leaves dancing on trees.
In that moment, I am.
Resolutions fall away like friends and dead skin.
Huddled conversations are hot air to keep warm by.
Fireworks sparkle briefly to highlight dismal failure.
Alcohol will forgive you because no one else will.
Vibrations tilt my journey through the brickwork maze
Where transgressors punish all, including themselves.
Pitiful cries echo along the Legoland structures
The tears are for tomorrow, today’s too late.
Regret fills hearts, bottom drawers and love poems.
Lost potential clogs the sewers and arteries.
The fat of the land fails to feed the starving,
Yet, a wealthy number have consumption and gout.
from the collection Wet Morbidity, HM Prison & Young Offender Institution Aylesbury, Poetry Collection, 2025
from the collection Wet Morbidity, HM Prison & Young Offender Institution Aylesbury, Poetry Collection, 2025
Living Flashback
My room is infested with bedbugs
I’m covered in bites, not love bites
I have to spend the night on the low secure unit
That I’ve only just been discharged from.
The paranoid nurse who signs me in thinks I’ve been tricked
And that they’ll never let me leave
Strange, aggressive characters roam the halls
One spells out the word MURDER backwards and forwards aloud
Over and over.
I tell the people I know
That I’ve been recalled for getting pissed
Doesn’t hurt to try to fit in
The charge nurse makes me endless coffee
I’m not allowed my laptop, so am on
Pen and paper. This place isn’t how I remember it.
The smell of urine is very strong here.
All the bins are overflowing and some
Have been pissed in
Bogies decorate the walls alongside
Pictures of bridges done in the Art Therapy group.
The guy who spells MURDER keeps asking me to
Come and watch late night TV with him, alone in the lounge.
He comes knocking at my locked door a few times. In the end, I yell
FUCK OFF! really loudly and he scarpers
I’m given a chicken and bacon baguette
It tastes like a really nice chicken and bacon baguette would taste
If you smoked 40 a day.
The charge gives me leftover ASDA yoghurts from the staff fridge.
At 7:30AM I bang on the office door
‘Someone let me out of this hellhole!’
They sympathetically let me out and I go back to the shared house
Where I’ve never noticed the ivy growing over the porch;
It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,
I run my hands over it
I haven’t brushed my teeth in 24 hours
I’m dying for a cigarette.
I have to go back tonight.
from the collection 37/41, Littlemore Mental Health Centre, Gold Award for Poetry Collection, 2025
from the collection 37/41, Littlemore Mental Health Centre, Gold Award for Poetry Collection, 2025
Alliteration
Alive with alliteration
it’s the sign of a literate nation
There we meet for a meat eating meeting,
Gravy and chips that sure takes some beating!
There’s Polly the polyglot parrot
saying prayers with the parson in Sarrot.
He’s plainly planning a plantain plantation,
where plainsong and play will go in rotation.
Stunted Steve and his stammering strimmer
straightening the station street border.
There, at Callum’s Calculated Calligraphy
The cards are getting all Christmassey.
Now dressing for dressage in drizzle
drenched and drowned in all of this drivel.
Thames Valley Probation Service, Commended Award for Poem, 2025
