Glynis O’Hara
WHILE prisons may no longer accuse people with artistic ideas of being “pansies”, and open their doors to a range of creativity projects, they most certainly do not want to pay for them.
“We’ve been forced to shut down,” says Gary Friedman of Puppets In Prison. “We’ve worked for the past seven months without any further funding and we can’t go on.” Friedman and his colleague Nyanga Tshabalala went to prisons five days a week for eight months this year.
Puppets In Prison workshopped scripts with prisoners, who then made their own puppets and acted out and directed the dramas on Aids and related issues. It was originally prompted by a request for Aids education from the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) and the pilot programme funded by the Department of Health, says Friedman.
The DCS, however, said in a statement this week that Friedman approached them in January this year suggesting a pilot – they did not commission the work. It also said the go- ahead for the project would only be given after the pilot had been evaluated for effectiveness and cost. And it was money that caused the problem.
Friedman proposed expanding his programme to a national level visiting all the prisons. He budgeted a cost of R5-million for five years, to equip 10 teams in all nine provinces. “They said it was excessive but I don’t think R5-million is a high cost to reach all the prisoners in the country with an ongoing, sustained programme.”
“His proposal was considered too expensive,” says the DCS.
The department did not, says Friedman, even come back proposing a more modest programme, but simply rejected the project. The DCS denies this, saying Friedman was told if he came up with a more cost-effective programme it “may reconsider his proposal”.
An evaluation done by Aids expert Dr Clive Evian and Renee Bub, a programme evaluator, calls it an “excellent initiative”, in the light of a “limited understanding of Aids, its means of transmission and prevention amongst the majority of prisoners”, many of whom even doubt the disease’s existence.
“I don’t understand it,” says Friedman, “how can you ask for a programme, have it evaluated and find that it is really good and then dump it? It makes no sense to me. We got R90 000 for the pilot project, which we finished on April 3.”
Meanwhile, Elaine Rumboll’s poetry workshop at Diepkloof Prison continues, despite its year-long Arts Alive funding running out at the end of September: “Why aren’t people helping with these projects? … We’re not charity workers and it’s difficult work … It’s all very, very depressing.”