Christmas Cards for Prisoners

Date: 11 December 2020

Our Art, Design & Media Level 1 students and Photography Level 3 students have been busy working on a very special project. They were given a brief from Jose Aguiar, Teacher Training Lecturer at East Surrey College, to produce postcard designs for prisoners to give to their loved ones over the festive period. Jose also works as an education consultant in Pentonville Prison and explained that Christmas for the residents will look very different this year due to the current pandemic. Visits will be reduced or cancelled so prisoners may not be able to see their families and will miss out on connecting with loved ones during this time of year.

The Reigate School of Art students came up with some fantastic designs, which were then scanned and printed onto card ready to be taken to the prisoners. Che Kevlin, the tutor for both courses said:

“Helping Jose spread goodwill over a difficult Christmas period has been an enlightening experience. The ethical approach our students have taken has demonstrated their sensitive and caring nature. They were thrilled to be involved and discussed the brief to a greater extent to explore the very notion of 'Gift'. They created handmade Christmas cards, using a range of artistic skills, and engaged in some very useful debate on ways to approach this project. We are all very pleased with the results and hope that they will be cherished by someone special along the way. The students managed to restore a sense of normality to a subject that we sometimes forget. The 'art of giving' is the message that I will personally take away from this. My thanks go out to everyone involved and to Jose and our students for making this happen!”

Students also commented on the process as Emel (Art, Design & Media Level 1) said “I really enjoyed making the Christmas cards as I was happy to make something heartfelt for prisoners to send off to their families”.

Chelsea (Art, Design & Media Level 1) also commented, “I joined in with this task because I feel that everyone deserves to send their families a Christmas card to show that they really miss them”.