When the Museum Comes to Prison: Oxford’s ‘In the Frame’ Programme

How the University of Oxford’s Gardens, Libraries and Museums is using handling objects and creative activities to support wellbeing inside HMP Bullingdon and HMP Grendon.

What happens when a museum removes its walls entirely — and brings its objects into one of the most challenging environments imaginable? For the community engagement team at the University of Oxford Gardens, Libraries and Museums (GLAM), the answer has been a programme called In the Frame, and the results have been quietly remarkable.

From Pilot to Programme

GLAM’s work in the criminal justice sector didn’t begin with a polished blueprint. Since 2022, the team had been running occasional sessions in Bullingdon Prison, bringing handling objects in to stimulate conversation. A social prescribing pilot followed, run in partnership with NHS England Health and Justice — but as community engagement officer Sarah Levete acknowledges, that pilot didn’t go entirely to plan.

“The outcome of this pilot was mixed as we were over ambitious and unclear in our aims,” she says. “However, importantly, we took learning from this pilot to design a new programme.”

That new programme was In the Frame: a six-week course combining museum objects with hands-on creative activities, running in both Bullingdon and Grendon prisons. Attendance is voluntary, sessions last around an hour and a half, and there are no sanctions for not showing up. The tone is deliberately relaxed and exploratory rather than instructional.

Each programme begins with a mystery object session and a bookmaking activity, with participants encouraged to suggest themes and activities themselves. Sessions have explored the stories behind objects, block printing inspired by artefact patterns, simple basket weaving, and making charms inspired by objects connected to protection. There are no outcomes expected and, as Levete puts it plainly: “There are no mistakes.”

Objects as Equaliser

What makes In the Frame distinctive is the pairing of museum objects with creative making. In most museums, you don’t touch the collection — and the men in these sessions know that. Being handed a real artefact, permitted to hold and examine it, carries a weight that goes beyond the educational.

Alex Pass, library manager at HMP Bullingdon, who has worked alongside Sarah for close to two years delivering the sessions, describes the effect vividly: “You’ve got these big burly men covered in tattoos, holding this tiny thing, really worried about damaging it. It shows that they have a lot of respect for the items, a lot of respect for the sessions.”

The objects spark conversation and curiosity — a mammoth tooth, a witch in a bottle — and that curiosity then carries over into the making activity, where hands are occupied and minds can settle. “Whether it’s just having something in your hands that you’re doing, whether it’s tying that in with the historical thing,” Pass reflects, “the men find it really… they do really benefit.”

For Josh Wainwright, community connections officer at HMP Bullingdon, the combination brings both elements to life: “It’s not just the activity, but understanding that this is going back quite a long time. These techniques are going back generations. The activities on their own would actually be really, really good, but matching them with the exhibits just means that both of them kind of pop and come to life.”

Wellbeing in a Hard Environment

Prison is hard. That might sound obvious, but it’s worth stating plainly when discussing what a Thursday morning session with a museum object can actually mean for someone inside.

“Prison’s hard,” says Pass. “Sometimes you just need that little boost on a Thursday morning just to get you through till the end of the week.”

Participant feedback supports this. One man, reflecting on sessions he attended, described the effect simply: “If I was having a down day on that specific day and then I know I’ve got the workshop coming up, it boosted my morale. It does really help with certain things that you’re dealing with being inside, because it can be a really tough time in here. So things like that really do lift you up and you forget where you are for a bit.”

Wainwright recalls a participant walking out and saying: “That was well therapeutic, innit.” He adds: “When they’re there, they’re not in prison. They don’t feel like they’re in their cells. They’re in a nice space, they’re doing something creative, and it increases their self-confidence and their wellbeing and makes them just feel a bit more human.”

The programme has also shown particular value for participants with ADHD and other neurodiverse profiles. Wainwright has observed the difference directly: “Their mind would be going a million miles an hour on the wing. Seeing them at the sessions, they are so much more at ease.”

Nicola Henton-Mitchell, diversity and inclusion manager at HMP Grendon and HMP Springhill — whose support enabled In the Frame to run at Grendon — highlights another dimension: the way the sessions create space for honest connection. “It’s the chance to not have to carry around that bravado that they have to have on the wing. You’re in a group setting and you’re all allowed to be like-minded in a relaxed and safe way, with no judgement.”

Rethinking Who Museums Are For

In the Frame is explicitly not therapy, and not an art class. But it carries an ambition beyond the session itself — one about what museums can mean in people’s lives after release.

“A lot of these men who sign up to our courses have got maybe a broken relationship with education,” says Pass. “This reignites a bit of a passion for them. Turning museums into an accessible part of the community is really important, because when they are released and when they’re looking to maybe grow themselves, they probably wouldn’t have considered museums.”

Wainwright echoes this: “A lot of people in the justice system don’t feel legitimised in that space. They might enter a museum and think, ‘Am I supposed to be here?’ Making sure that they are welcome, that it is a space for them as well — these sessions really break down those barriers.”

For Henton-Mitchell, it connects to something more fundamental: “I think it helps them find their place in society when they’ve maybe not had a great place in society.”

There are family connections forming too. Henton-Mitchell describes men going back to their wings and telling people — their families — about the witch in a bottle, about what they held and what they learned. “That’s something that the families can then access, and then you can have those two-way conversations,” she says. “It’s so important to have something to talk about that isn’t just prison life.”

Honest About Evaluation

The team is candid about where the programme still has room to grow. Feedback is currently gathered through postcards at the start and end of sessions, and a more detailed form at the final session. Levete acknowledges that this is relatively light-touch: “Perhaps this is an area we need to explore more to build more robust evidence as to the impact of this programme on participants’ mood and wellbeing.”

That honesty is refreshing, and characteristic of a project that began by learning from what didn’t work. In the Frame is not presented as a finished model, but as a developing practice — one that Levete and her colleagues are keen to share. Moving forwards, GLAM is looking to connect with other organisations working in the criminal justice sector to exchange learning and develop best practice together.

The sessions are modest in scale. Six weeks. An hour and a half at a time. Voluntary attendance, no grades, no required outcomes. But for the men who attend them, they are something much harder to manufacture: a space where the rules of prison life are briefly suspended, where curiosity is welcomed, and where — holding a mammoth tooth or weaving the beginning of a basket — they are, for a while, simply people making something.

Sarah Levete presented this work at the Museum & Wellbeing Summit 2026. GLAM’s In the Frame programme runs at HMP Bullingdon and HMP Grendon.