How that looks varies depending on the prison, the people involved and what feels useful at the time. Sometimes we run Vox Sessions: three consecutive days of intensive songwriting, where people work alongside professional musicians to write and record an original song. No previous musical experience is needed, and people can arrive with an idea or with nothing planned – we work it out together.

At other times, we meet weekly over a longer period. That gives relationships and ideas more time to develop, and creates space to experiment, respond to what people are interested in and see where the creative process takes us.
Whichever format we use, the emphasis is on making together rather than doing something to or for people. We’re not there to find out why somebody is in prison, and nobody needs to tell their story. People decide what they want to make and what they want to say. Songwriting can open up conversations about identity, family, home, justice, hope, frustration or what might come next – but it can also just be about making a really good song.

MORE THAN SONGWRITING
Songwriting has been central to Vox from the beginning, and we’ve developed a lot of experience in using it as a collaborative practice. But it isn’t the only way to make, communicate or connect.

We’ve also experimented with creative writing, visual arts, film and other creative forms alongside music, and over the coming months we’ll be doing more of this. Creating different ways into the work matters: not everyone wants to write a song, and people bring different interests, skills and ways of expressing themselves.

Working across different art forms also gives us more ways to connect people with questions of justice and with perspectives they might not otherwise encounter. A song, a poem, an image or a piece of film can communicate something that is difficult to capture in a report or a formal conversation. Creative work can make space for complexity, curiosity and disagreement, helping people with different experiences of justice to see and hear one another differently.

For us, the art matters in its own right. We want people to make things they value and are proud of. But the process of making together matters too. It can create opportunities for people to be seen as fuller, more complicated people, rather than being flattened by labels or institutions.

FROM PRISON TO COMMUNITY
Importantly, our relationship with somebody doesn’t necessarily have to end when a prison project does.

A growing focus of our prison work is around transition: particularly when somebody is approaching the end of a sentence, moving through the prison system or beginning to spend time back in the community. These can be significant periods of change, when relationships, belonging and continuity matter.

That creates a pathway into Unbound, our ongoing creative community in Glasgow. Someone might first encounter Vox through a project in prison, meet an Unbound community member as part of the project team, reconnect with us while on day release or home detention curfew (HDC), and then come along to Unbound after release.

That pathway is important because release is not a neat dividing line between prison and the rest of life. Building a relationship before someone leaves prison can mean there is already a familiar person, place or community to connect with afterwards. Rather than starting again at the prison gate, there can be something to continue. The connection between prison-based work and Unbound means that what happens inside can become part of something longer: a creative relationship and a community that can travel across the prison gate.

Increasingly, people with lived experience of justice are also part of delivering the work. Unbound community members take on paid sessional roles across Vox projects, bringing their own skills and experience alongside artists and facilitators.

HOW WE WORK
Across all of this, we try to live out the same principles that guide Vox Liminis more widely: prioritising relationships, welcoming, making together, sharing power, disagreeing well and following the energy.
That means the shape of a project is not only determined by a timetable or a pre-planned outcome. We pay attention to the people in the room, what they are interested in, what they bring and what becomes possible when people make something together.

We hope those ways of working create opportunities for life to feel more connected, more creative, more purposeful, more enjoyable, more just and fair, and more hopeful. They also help us learn together about crime, punishment and justice – across lived experience, professional experience and creative practice – and imagine what different responses might look like.