This is the prison diary of the ‘Artist Formally Known As’ doing his 452 day sentence. In equal measures its genuinely hilarious, depressing and prophetic. Steven AFKN describes the process of getting the job as a prison art tutor and then records the everyday lessons and life inside these weird, and not so wonderful institutions. He describes the numerous times students are off their heads on ‘spice’ in the classrooms or the latent threat of violence and disruption but this is interspersed with (infrequent) reflections when he knows he has made a difference, in near impossible situations. All through the book, its evident that he does care about the inmates and want to make a difference to their lives and their future. But I can see its equally frustrating, prison art education is deeply underfunded and its only seen by the prison authorities, Ofsted inspectors and more or less anyone else as tick box exercise just to get the inmates out of the cells for an hour or two.
There be better reviews of this book, by better writers, who will talk about the authors’ writing style (which is excellent), give you a better summary of the incidents (which are both funny and depressing) and comment on the pace and structure of the book (both top notch) but I just want to focus on the critical pedagogy of the book – which is not really its intention but here goes. For me, one of the most outstanding diary pieces is the authors rant about lesson plans. This piece of writing should be essential reading for every prospective teacher on whatever subject they are teaching – in fact, the whole book should be on every PGCE and PGCert course in every university in the country! In just the this one diary entry, he encapsulates everything that is wrong about modern day teaching – you need to buy the book for this reason alone.
Given the very limited resources inside the prison system it is truly amazing what he manged to achieve. I haven’t heard a tutor talk so enthusiastically about an overhead projector in decades! Pens, pencils, materials seem to be scavenged from strange and wonderful places. Art school techniques are serendipitous introduced into the lesson – the whole process seems to be teetering on the edge. Reading between the lines I also go the sense that the author was slowly turning into a strange version of his students. Early diary entries seem to be fairly objective but as the systems starts to grind him down too he starts to exhibit the same features as his students. Like his students, the only way he can exhibit these frustrations is through these random rants – some of the best writing is describing the chaotic classroom changes from one side of the prison, and back again.
Its a really good book, fun to read but great for anyone thinking about teaching, currently teaching or has a view about teaching (which is everyone) – get it!
And finally, a great little video vaguely connected to this book review:
totallyrewired 