Hydebank Wood Young Offenders Centre

Hydebank Wood Young Offenders Centre is a medium to low security establishment.  The centre accommodates all young male offenders aged between 17 and 21 years on conviction, serving a period of 4 years or less in custody and all female prisoners including young offenders.

The Peace III EU funded Reconciliation Programme in Edgehill College works in partnership with Hydebank to provide young offenders in Northern Ireland with the tools to explore and appreciate their own identity and to address issues of difference in regard to sectarianism and racism. 

Based on the educational principles of Paolo Freire and John Dewey, we work collaboratively with the young people in an effort to make the sessions relevant as well as rigorous.  Our focus is on relationships, cultural awareness and integration so that participants experience a positive and sustained change in their attitudes towards others while gaining the capacity to engage confidently with them.  

Since October 2010, the Edgehill Reconciliation Programme in partnership with Hydebank Prison has been undertaking a creative, educational project with young offenders called ‘My Story’.  The purpose of ‘My Story’ is to enable young offenders in prison to reflect on their identity and issues of sectarianism and racism while gaining practical training and experience in a creative process, guided by a professional practitioner. The project offers them unique insights and provides for a range of personal and creative developments. It is hoped that the project will lead to a creative production making use of the medium of film animation.

There will be four primary workshop series for the project. Initial workshops have focused on exploring imagination and personal storytelling around difficult issues. The second series will involve narrative generation and exposure to a range of creative media. This will be followed by a workshop series on model-making. This, in turn, will be followed by acting workshops and Animatics (the acting out of stories and scenes for animation development). At the end of each series, outside work and modifications will be done with the prisoners’ work to prepare it for each subsequent series. The initial workshops will serve four groups so that we can engage a number of young offenders to help select who will be best suited to progress with the project.

The work with young offenders should inspire people often excluded from peace building processes to incorporate the values of reconciliation and integration and encourage them to address pressing issues within their sphere of influence. This should lead to sustainable relationships generated while providing the tools and confidence that will foster greater understanding, reconciliation and integration across the Region amongst marginalised groups.

To visit Hydebank Young Offenders' Prison's website please click here