Prisons Media Programme - South Africa

Mediaworks has been conducting media training at the Hawequa Youth Centre on the rural outskirts of Wellington since 1999. The programme is built into the curriculum of the prison school, as an extra mural activity. Fifteen participants are selected per year to undertake training in the following subjects: media awareness, print media production, life skills, and basic design.

The outcomes of the training include the production of banners, t-shirts, and posters. After training, prisoners produce media for local civic structures and for events such as World Aids Day and local government elections.

The project has a media training component and results in the ongoing production of prison newsletters by and for inmates. The newsletters act as a medium to promote horizontal and vertical communication, education, information dissemination, entertainment, and conflict resolution within prisons. A newsletter is produced quarterly at Pollsmoor Female Section called "Women's Link". When the project was started at Hawequa 3 editions were produced, but the organisers say they have subsequently stopped because of resouces.

Inmates are given an opportunity to provide input into the course curriculum during focus group discussions in the needs assessment phase. Further input is solicited during the evaluation process. The media awareness module includes a unit on Gender and Communication; thus all participants are exposed to gender issues - both men and women.

Gender, Conflict, Women, Technology.

Mediaworks provides training opportunities as well as access to facilities for media production and distribution for the least-heard voices of society, including, among others, the Prisons Media Programme.

This expanded programme is based on the success of media training conducted by Mediaworks Rural Programme (MRP) at the Hawequa Youth Centre (Correctional Services) over 5 years and aims to accommodate requests made to Mediaworks to extend these services to other prisons in the rural areas. MRP is an effort to provide entry-level access to training opportunities and facilities for media production, thus giving the prisoners the means to exercise their fundamental right to communicate in today's information age. The Prisons Media Programme is designed to function as a "demonstration model" with the long-term goal of institutionalising arts and media/communication training as an integral part of rehabilitation programmes within South African Prisons.