Answers on a postcard… Over the last year Penned Up has been asking people in prison: Tell Me One Truth About Prison Whilst everyone experiences prison differently there are some common experiences that are not always heard/understood and these ‘truths’ unlock what prison is actually like for those who have not experienced it. By combining…
Tell Me One Truth About Prison Film
The Secret Life Of Prisons podcast
How to run a festival in a prison | David Kendall and Jailhouse Moose Ten years ago, David Kendall decided to put on an entire festival of arts and literature inside HMP Lewes. This was the birth of Penned Up, a unique annual event which is now in its tenth year, and which has found…
10 Years Of Penned Up in Clinks
Celebrating 10 years of Penned Up (2015 – 2025) The festival started in HMP Lewes in 2015, it has run programmes in Downview and Erlestoke, with the latter becoming its base. The model is always a committee of prisoners working with the festival directors to put together a programme reflecting the interests and needs of…
Article in Inside Time
From prisoner to TV actorA group of men are crammed into a not-very-big room. Perhaps as many as 40, standing room filled too. In front of them one man is talking, telling them about his life, his story as he grew up with a drug-dealing mother who was eventually taken into prison. Then he turned…
Penned Up in the Big Issue!
Penned Up creator David Kendall on curating a decade of inspirational literary events in prisons, with Nick Cave among the guest speakers Penned Up is a unique literary festival created for and with people in prison. This year, we mark the tenth anniversary of Penned Up with our 11th festival and our seventh at HMP…
Our first Penned Up with Erlestoke’s new laptops.
https://www.bigissue.com/news/social-justice/future-prisons-technology-digital/
Against the current – writings and drawings by prisoners at HMP Lewes
Against the current- Penned Up at HMP Lewes
This was the Penned Up where nobody moved. It was the winter of 2020-21 and while other festivals went online Penned Up went onto the wings. Outside it was tiers and lockdowns, ahead and behind us. Inside, for people in prison, little had changed. HMP Lewes has some pluses, it has an excellent library –…
Art on the Wing
Running a version of Penned Up through the Covid19 lockdown Read more: Prisoners turn critics to review TV shows and films during Penned Up Festival
TEDx Talk on Penned Up
For the past two decades David Kendall has worked on a variety of creative projects in prisons. This talk is about his experience of being a co-director of “Penned Up,” a literary festival in a prison.
