Street Cones Artistic Mission

Street Cones is a social and community enterprise providing peer support, mentoring and creative activities for people experiencing or having experienced the criminal justice system to re-integrate back into their local community.

Our core activities of working with those who have made mistakes, will be in support of or alongside other organisations that have the same values and goals as us, in support of early intervention and prevention.

Our purpose

Changing lives positively

How we will achieve this

By listening to the lived experiences of those who have made mistakes and using creative arts, we support their development, building their confidence and worth, their value as community members, and through involving communities build a greater acceptance and objectivity.

Drivers/goals:

The creation of opportunity and employment for those re-integrating
Improving and developing life and social skills
Growing self-esteem, self-assurance, confidence and personal impact and building hope
The reduction of offending & re-offending
A decrease in substance abuse
For others (young people) not to make the same mistakes as some of our Cones
Communities which become accepting of and objective to those who once made mistakes

How we do this

We work with offenders, reforming and reformed offenders, and others who have made mistakes. We call them Street Cones or simply Cones.

We listen to and understand their lived experiences, their emotions, and the consequences they have experienced of going through the criminal justice system. We explore the triggers relating to offending and bad behaviour, abuse of research chemicals (legal highs) and family breakdown.

We then introduce them to creativity; drama, theatre, film, art and story telling, whichever suits best. We use a supported and robust process to enable engagement, development and growth underpinning our creativity interventions.

The development of Cones' relationship with creativity is astonishing often moving from embarrassed mucking about to considered involvement to a realisation that doing something creative can open the mind, set you free and change your view of the world.

We encourage the stories they need to tell, and use these to craft an outcome through performance or art, where those telling the stories become immersed in creating and delivering the outcome.

Whether as script writers, musicians, painters, actors, dancers, backstage crew - we encourage everyone participating to take a role, and ultimately a bow.

Outcomes - performance, art exhibition, short film, radio broadcast - are shared with a variety of audiences; children in care, school children, prisoners within the SPS, social workers, prison staff. After each delivered outcome we open the floor up to everyone holding question and answer sessions and guided discussion. Occasionally and where appropriate, we invite audience members to re-visit the delivered outcome and rework it based on any thoughts arising from the Q&A or discussions or in cases their lived experiences.

What we see

Many of our Cones have built and improved literacy, communication and social skills, self- esteem and self-confidence.

Cones come away proud with a sense of achievement, ownership and being engaged.

Young people not making the same mistakes as some of our Cones did, walking in their shoes, and recognising they can have a positive attitude to their future and make pro-social relationships that matter to them.

Reforming offenders re-integrating positively into their community with hope, motivation and confidence. A change in their belief system from a fixed to growth mindset and an understanding that there is much they can achieve.

Communities recognising that those coming out of the criminal justice system, those who have made mistakes deserve chance, hope and can add value to and take their place in the community.