Everybody in prison was once a child
This autumn, Koestler Arts returns to the Southbank Centre with its annual exhibition celebrating the creativity, talent and imagination of people in criminal justice settings.
Rock, Paper, Scissors opens on 16 October in the Undercroft and presents artworks submitted to the 2026 Koestler Awards, the UK’s longest-running national arts awards programme for work made in prisons, secure hospitals, young offender institutions and by people on probation.
For the first time in the show’s history, the artworks have been selected by members of the Parental Imprisonment Collective (PIC), a group of young adults with experience of a parent in prison during childhood. PIC are supported by Young Ambassadors from Prison Advice and Care Trust (PACT), a leading charity working with children and families affected by parental imprisonment. Bringing together five different perspectives, the curators have created an exhibition that invites audiences to look beyond assumptions about imprisonment and consider the complex human stories behind the artworks.
This year’s curators hope visitors will reconsider what it means to have a parent in prison, while also recognising that people in criminal justice settings are not defined solely by their circumstances or their sentence. The exhibition highlights the complexity of individual experiences, revealing stories of creativity, imagination, humour, vulnerability and hope.
The PIC said, “We’ve come together to curate an exhibition that charts a journey of life from childhood onwards, and the different paths a life can take. We hope we’ve interpreted the work in a way the artists themselves would recognise.
“When people go through the exhibition, we want them to think differently about what it means to grow up with a parent in prison. We also want visitors to remember that everybody in prison was once a child too. They are not just the sum of their sentence.”
A programme of events and activities around the exhibition will include Words In, Words Out, part of London Literature Festival and in association with Service95 Book Club, reflecting on the power of literature, reading, and writing in Britain’s criminal justice system.
The 2026 exhibition follows a distinguished line of Koestler Arts guest curators. Previous curators for the exhibition have included Ai Weiwei, Antony Gormley, Benjamin Zephaniah, Camille Walala, Grayson Perry, Inua Ellams, Jeremy Deller and John Costi, Lady Unchained, Sarah Lucas, and Speech Debelle.
Undercroft, Southbank Centre – 16 October – 29 November
Free entry
Support the Arts: https://koestlerarts.org.uk/support-us/
