The second edition of FACT's online journal explores Resolution, a seven-year programme that brought together artists, people in prison, their families, criminologists, and justice professionals to question how we think about crime, punishment, and change.
Supported by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Resolution presented a new approach to making art within the Justice System. Instead of focusing on therapy or rehabilitation alone, it centred listening, collaboration, and lived experience – creating artworks that speak to time, identity, and human dignity.
This edition gathers reflections from artists, campaigners, researchers, and FACT’s Learning team, capturing the innovations and challenges of this long-term experiment in socially engaged practice. Essays, interviews, and case studies reveal how collaborative art projects opened new ways of imagining justice and social policy.
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Highlights include:
- Dr Nicola Triscott on art, justice, and the practice of listening.
- Dr Vid Simoniti on meaning versus impact in socially engaged art.
- Andrew Neilson on campaigning, advocacy, and experiencing Melanie Crean’s A Machine to Unmake You.
- FACT Learning Team on becoming listeners and building ethical capacity.
- Dr Emma Murray reflecting on her decade as FACT’s Criminologist in Residence.
- Amartey Golding in conversation on chainmail, time, and collective creation.
The journal documents four major commissions created in partnership with people in prison:
- Melanie Crean – A Machine to Unmake You (2019–2024): exploring military identity, trauma, and the hero’s journey.
- Katrina Palmer – Sentences (2024): a collaborative book of writing on freedom and imagination.
- Ain Bailey – FOUR (2024): sonic autobiographies connecting imprisoned men and their families through sound.
- Amartey Golding – Chainmail 4: Silent Knight (2025): a monumental chainmail sculpture embodying permanence, collaboration, and time.
Resolution demonstrates how art can create spaces for listening, trust, and shared meaning across divides. Rather than measuring outcomes through numbers alone, the programme values the complexity of human experience – showing that cultural institutions can influence social systems by placing lived experience at the centre.
