University News Last updated 25 March 2009
Research carried out by senior lecturers at Birmingham City University has found that teaching music in prisons has a long term positive impact on prisoner's social, physical and mental wellbeing.
Professor David Wilson and colleague, Laura Caulfield from the Centre for Criminal Justice Policy and Research, recently completed an innovative project for the national prison charity, Good Vibrations.
The £5,000 project investigated the long-term institutional impact of the Good Vibrations in Prison project on a group of prisoners from HMP Grendon who took part in a week long course in the Gamelan, an Indonesian percussion instrument.
Following the course, the prisoners were assessed for any possible changes in emotions and behaviour, based on an emotional scale developed by the research team.
There was clear evidence that the project had strongly helped to improve prison staff/inmate relationships as well as helping to reduce anger levels in prisoners' openness to wider scopes of learning.