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'Learning by doing' – charity using work and community spirit to bring people back from their darkness and into the light…
South Devon is a secretive kind of place, with its narrow winding lanes, high hedges and sudden valleys. So my visit to LandWorks shouldn't have come as a surprise. Yet somehow I didn't expect what might be called a rehabilitation centre, but is actually very much different and very much more, to be located within the beautiful Dartington Estate. Turn right and there's a shop, and here's a statue called 'Symbol' and there are a cluster of handcrafted buildings, including a woodwork room and a veranda with a long table, plus a grapevine clustered over it; beyond them polytunnels and finally a field of salad and vegetables.
My first impression was that I'd come to some kind of holiday centre where clearly there were a lot of activities going on, but in such romantic surroundings that you wouldn't start thinking in terms of work. Admittedly, it was a sunny day in spring when most things in the countryside look joyful. In fact, I was both totally wrong and quite a bit right.
Chris Parsons started up LandWorks in 2013 with the idea of helping people who were trying to recover from the prison experience and, indeed, their whole life experience, and find them a core of wellbeing which would enable them to find a happier and more productive future. These are my words. Chris is a modest man and it is typical that when I arrived, he did not sit me down and fill me with facts about the 95% who leave LandWorks and find work, or the 95% who don't reoffend. Instead he hands me over to James.
James is a trainee volunteer in the programme who had found himself in prison after trouble related to alcohol addiction. He is still on probation, like many of the men working at the centre who may come for a day or five days, the bus fare, wherever they might be, Torquay, Paignton, Totness, paid for by the centre. This attention to detail is typical of the way LandWorks is run. There is no sense that one schedule fits all. Indeed, most of the people working there don't have a strict programme. On the other hand, they are expected to work a full day, whether in the wood workshop, the market garden, the pottery, the kitchen or general maintenance.
Yet as James demonstrates with his dramatic new project, they are both taught how to make a table and allowed to be creative in their own way. Since LandWorks is an independent charity, the money made from the shop is important and later Chris tells me that it provides 20% of their funds. He believes that it is important for everyone's self-respect that volunteers and employees alike are not merely playing at work but helping to run a business. Chris also emphasises that the community atmosphere, indeed the sense of being part of a family, is what makes LandWorks different from most other projects.
I notice this as James takes me from place to place meeting Graham, who is head of woodwork, Michael, who is carefully making a pot, Steve and Darren, who are working among the vegetables, Lucy, who is head of market gardening, and a second Steve, head of maintenance. All of them interrupt their work for a friendly chat and Lucy takes over from James to show me the polytunnels which allows LandWorks to sell bags of mixed salad, their big money-maker, throughout the year. I make her pose beside a statue in the ornamental garden with pond, which is called, appropriately enough, 'Overcome the Darkness into Light'.
James tells me: 'LandWorks is somewhere I can rewind, relax and reassess.' Although the place and the work is so important in this process there is also more conventional help, with specialist services delivering regular support sessions – including Citizens Advice, a housing specialist and NHS drugs and alcohol support. Face to face 1-1 support includes LandWorks' own Life Measures tool to assess an individual's needs if he is to avoid re-offending and track his progress.
Graham, the woodwork supremo, now works for LandWorks full-time, but five years ago he arrived on ROTL from HMP Channings Wood. His side of the business is so successful that despite most of the men having no previous experience, they have sold between five and six hundred picnic benches. When ROTL declined and Covid struck, men were no longer able to come from prison directly but their places were filled by those on licence or serving community sentences. Chris notes that around 75% come from Torbay, which faces high levels of inequality, deprivation and unemployment.
The working day at LandWorks has two halves and in the middle there is The Lunch. I put it in capitals because it takes me back to my sense of a holiday atmosphere. The day I visited there were about a dozen of us round the home-made wooden table, under the vine, workers, volunteers, trainees, plus a new potential trainee with his probation officer, Gabriel. Over the years, Gabriel has brought many men to LandWorks and Nick, today's candidate, goes away with a commitment to start work the following week. The delicious meal is usually cooked by a trainee, adding another skill that can be used after he's left. Most trainees stay at LandWorks for between six to nine months.
On one side of me sits Chris Parson's wife who works at Plymouth University. Since its establishment, LandWorks has had an ongoing contact with the university to undertake an annual evaluation of its work. The reports come from trainees telling their stories and their experience of LandWorks in their own words. As the PeN research project, they are turned into blog posts and are published on a dedicated website. I picked up this blog from Tony, posted in March this year, 'This'll be part of me for life now, even when I've left, because without it, I don't know where I'd be…'
One of the nicest things about LandWorks is that it doesn't say a once and for all goodbye when its trainees move on. Chris tells me that they're in contact with around a hundred individuals every month, who they continue to support. They expect that each person will gradually taper off their contact as their own life takes over and they need less support. Chris describes this need for further help as 'recognition that desistance from offending can be a long and uneven journey.' He tells me, 'It cements everything we do. Why would you shut the door and say goodbye?'
Another trainee, contributing to the LandWorks website, tells the story of his return to prison after his time at LandWorks and their decision, when he came out, to give him a second chance. All this confirms my understanding both from my meeting and what I have read, that Chris and his team have a real understanding of the difficulties faced by men and women(they are beginning to find women trainees) who want to turn their life around.
In our conversation, Chris gives me three of LandWorks' principle aims, all underpinned by what he describes as 'learning by doing.' He has already talked about improving wellbeing and reducing re-offending, but the final one is 'informing the wider community of the difficulties facing these men.' That is perhaps the hardest ambition of all, when so many people are unsympathetic to anyone who has spent time in prison. But I suspect that any passer-by who buys from their shop and is curious enough to look a little further will realise just how positive the LandWorks community is and how keen the people who work there are to fit back into society.
I'll let Joshua, another recent LandWorks blogger, have the final word, 'Sometimes, you need a little help to kind of see the light as it were or even be reminded of what kind of life you could, you know, reminded of what kind of person you could be or was…'
www.landworks.org.uk
vinsonthipstrealm.blogspot.com
Source: https://insidetime.org/no-holiday-camp-3/
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