30th anniversary Zine available to read online

Our Zine ‘Focused on the Sky: 30 Years of Making Music in Prisons’ is available to read online as flipbook now!

Curated by our Creative Engagement & Progression Manager Kitya Mark, the Zine was created as part of a series of special celebratory projects for our 30th anniversary supported by Arts Council England.

Accessible version compatible with ‘read aloud’ function

If you require the Zine in a format that can be set to read aloud, please click here

Here’s the ‘Counting In’ introduction to give you a flavor of the Zine:

Counting In

The United Kingdom has the highest prison population in Europe, yet the people locked inside are too often overlooked and under-resourced. Operating out of a narrow office in East London that’s filled with boxes of CDs, the Irene Taylor Trust (ITT) is a music charity delivering projects in prisons across the country. Founded in the mid-90s by Sara Lee, ITT has worked in 94 prisons, supporting thousands of people to create hundreds of songs.

This zine gathers together accounts from participants, facilitators and office staff who make-up a small part of ITT’s community. Interspersed with scanned clippings from the archive, Focused on the Sky documents the impact of making music behind bars, and the challenges of navigating the prison system.

The title references a track of the same name, created during an ITT project in a youth prison. Its score accompanies this journey through the archive (listen to it here). ‘Focused on the Sky’ was chosen not only because of its brilliant bass line, but because of the way the song’s title gestures towards hope. When ITT began in 1995 there were 52,617 people held in cells across England and Wales. Today this figure is closer to 90,000.

Prisons are, in many ways, much bleaker places than they were 30 years ago: they’re dangerously overcrowded, there’s high staff turnover and there’s less support and opportunities for the people who need it most. In spite of this changed landscape, ITT continues to offer vibrant, collaborative projects which cut through the isolation of prison life. Songs can’t shift walls or cell doors, but they can provide an outlet, and a feeling that you’re not alone. As one person in prison told us recently: “[while on a music project] I felt creative and inspired. I didn’t feel like I was in prison.”

Following its namesake, this zine is structured into sections. The verses trace the chronology of ITT’s history, beginning at Sara’s living room table in 1995, and ending with a conversation in our East London office 30 years later. The choruses showcase a parallel, visual history of audio technology, from project cassette tapes, to mini-discs, to CDs. Each handwritten card or illustrated CD sleeve signals a whole album of original music, created in a particular prison at a particular moment in time. The people who played on those tracks might have moved on, but their creativity is still recorded and celebrated.

This zine, and this organisation, is overflowing with talented musicians inside and outside prison walls.

Kitya Mark, Creative Engagement & Progression Manager

Print version

We have a small number of beautifully printed copies remaining – if you’re interested in getting hold of one, please contact us at info@irenetaylortrust.com.