Bartley, Sarah (2023) ‘What does transformative justice look like?’: Clean Break Theatre Company and the Young Artists Development Programme. In: The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Young People. Routledge companions . Routledge, London, pp. 651-673. ISBN 9781032348865

Abstract

Clean Break Theatre Company is the longest running prison theatre company in the UK, having been established in 1979 by women incarcerated in Her Majesty’s Prison (HMP) Askham Grange, Yorkshire, England.
Throughout this chapter, I draw on interviews conducted with the Young Artists and staff members at Clean Break as part of an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded research project on the company’s work.1 I particularly explore the importance of establishing layers of support in projects that aim to create inclusive routes into the theatre industry. Further, I examine how voice functions within the Young Artists Development Programme in order to illuminate the ways in which performance might be a useful tool in participatory youth justice frameworks. Finally, I explore Belong (2019) and Inside This Box (2020), productions created during the programme, identifying how these performance works advocate for intersectional understandings of crime and invites spectators to collectively imagine different possibilities for criminalised young people.