Arte y acción social en prisiones. Diseñando un taller permanente, primeras experiencias.

Abstract

The Artistic Expression Workshop, held in the Madrid IV penitentiary centre in the Madrid town of Navalcarnero, is a community-based art and artistic education project carried out by voluntary students of the Fine Arts Faculty of the Complutense University of Madrid. This project shares goals with volunteer internship and social action programmes and intends to be a support to the re-education and social inclusion of all participants. After a first experimental phase, it was considered the possibility of setting up the workshop permanently, leading up to the second phase on the analysis of which, this article focuses.

Several researches test the effectiveness of this type of projects as a tool for social integration in contexts of social exclusion. The main objective of this project is to cooperate in such integration. It is an experimental project which is still underway; and thus, these first experiences we are coming across will be the basis for its future development.

Far from being a usual handicrafts workshop, the particularities of the context and the lack of resources entail a continuing need of reconfiguration and adaptation to the circumstances. Consequently, some degree of experience and perseverance will be necessary for an effective analysis and meaningful conclusions.