‘How Does the Story End?’ Autoethnographic Research and Positive Redemption Narratives

• In Event: Roundtable: Redemption and Reentry

Abstract

This paper examines how Stretch Charity works with personal narrative in their practice of working with people in prison using art and digital storytelling. Taking an auto-ethnographic perspective, it examines how the researcher’s experience and personal narrative (as a person who has experience of prison) is part of Stretch’s workshops and narrative co-production. The presentation will share some examples of digital films produced by Stretch and reflect on how the personal narratives they contain reflect an entrepreneurial style of telling, echoing the research used in setting up Stretch. These entrepreneurial ‘redemption narratives’ pose tricky ethical and personal dilemmas that this paper will explore.

Carlotta Allum, Stretch Charity Director and Practitioner/PhD Candidate and Research Assistant at Design Against Crime, CSM UAL

Author

• Carlotta Allum, University of the Arts London