Koestler Arts: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY

The Koestler Awards is an annual programme encouraging people from the UK’s criminal justice system to change their lives through the arts.

This year’s Koestler Arts exhibition, hosted once again at the Southbank Centre, is curated by poet Joelle Taylor, who has worked creatively in prisons for over 20 years.

Choosing from over 8,000 artworks across visual, writing and music categories, the poet selected artworks that showcase both excellence and ingenuity – revealed through both the concept and skills on display as well as the resourcefulness of the artists’ use of unusual materials.

The title, IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, encourages visitors to complete the well-known phrase with ‘break glass’. The poet hopes that visitors will look at the artworks in the exhibition and think closer about the way we present and look at things, and how it feels to be on either side of the glass.

‘Most of all for me when I see these cases, it makes me think of what happens when we break the glass, what happens when ideas escape,’ Taylor says.