External Projects

Open Book team delivers its education and support programme with a variety of off-campus partners.

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The Facework Group

The Facework Group is a Social Enterprise that equips people to face the changing world of work through skills training and by developing affordable and supportive workspaces where communities can learn, share and work together. 

Open Book is working with Facework to deliver accreditation via the EPQ for participants win their “reset” programme, which is based on the principle that those with lived experience of migration who are already settled in the UK, are ideally placed to train and support refugee communities to find good quality work opportunities and integrate into local communities.​​

Learning Recognition for Social Action

Since 2021 we have been working as part of a knowledge exchange partnership with the Public Collaboration Lab, University of Arts London, Camden Council and local community organisations in Camden. The Extended Project Qualification framework was identified as a mechanism to support Camden residents to realise ideas for social action and accredit their learning. The local residents scope, research, prototype and define a social action project or business. They are then supported to apply for the We Make Camden Kit funding, which enables participants to continue to make their idea a reality.

In 2023 the first pilot of the Social Action EPQ was delivered in Somers Town, Kings Cross, one of twelve London neighbourhoods was selected for the GLA funding as part of the Future Neighbourhoods 2030 scheme. Project outcomes have included:

  • Bengali Mother Tongue: stay and play drop-ins that support parents and young children to learn to speak, read and write in English and Bengali.
  • The Children Will Save Us: Climate and sustainability workshops, with a focus on craft and storytelling for local children.
  • Stitch By Stitch: Community sewing workshops, that teach local women how to make, recycle and upcycle garments.
  • Swap Don’t Shop: Community clothes swapping events.

Prison Projects

Open Book has been delivering education in prison since 2017. We have worked with HMP Isis, HMP Downview, HMP Swaleside, and HMP Wandsworth to enable students to build research, creativity and critical thinking skills through the Extended Project Qualificaiton.

Students have produced projects focussing on Photography, Social Anthropology, History, Creative Writing and Philosophy. Several of them have used this qualification as a starting point to access higher education.

HMP Downview - Since 2021 Open Book have been facilitating the Open Book EPQ at HMP Downview Women’s Prison. There we work in partnership with third sector arts organisations that have a specific focus on working with women in the criminal justice system. Facilitators from partner arts organisations work with participants to explore a creative medium and build a portfolio of creative work. Open Book use their unique approach to develop academic literacy and support participants to research and develop individual projects that provides depth and understanding to the themes they are exploring. At the end of this process guests from inside and outside of the prison, along with family and friends of the participants, are invited to a showcase event, in which each participant presents their work and take part in a panel discuss.

Creative pathways that we currently deliver include Theatre and Performance, in partnership with Clean Break; Digital Storytelling, in partnership with Stretch.

Below are some examples of past projects and research topics

Along with Clean Break, student produced “Prescribed Identities”; as a performance focusing on the labels women are given within the criminal justice system, and the lack of care they experience, in regard to their individual needs and identities. Individual monologues and research projects focused on:

  • Religious freedom in the UK Prison Estate
  • Gender Inequality within the Irish Traveller Community
  • Women and Neurodiversity in the Criminal Justice System
  • Institutional racism in the UK
  • Thai Food and food satisfaction in Prison
  • Deindividuation and individuation as mechanisms for rehabilitation within prison
  • The power of creativity for enhancing wellbeing and rehabilitation

Working with Stretch  students produced and directed digital stories using filmed content, stop-frame animation, and stock images. Each digital story was focused around the group theme of ‘masking’, exploring chosen topics, such as:

  • ADHD
  • Stillbirth
  • Prison Education
  • Spirituality
  • Limbo
  • Dehumanisation
  • Resistance Art
  • Being a racial and religious minority in prison