A window into LandWorks

“I am the workshop manager, which involves the daily running of the workshop, making sure there are jobs for all the guys and girls to do each day and to bring an income in of roughly a £1000 a week if possible or hit a target of £4000 a month, whether that be for stuff going into the shop or private sales. We make everything from candle holders, bird boxes, tables, picnic benches, big tables, little tables, lots and lots of garden furniture, other sorts of furniture for people, woodturning and various jobs like that, and any jobs that the guys or girls might want to make for themselves. I have been doing that for, coming up to 10 years now … nine-a-half years at the moment. It’ll be 10 years in July.

So we work with people that are either currently in prison, at risk of going to prison, people who have got themselves tangled up within the Criminal Justice System and I would say that our job is to give them life skills, teach them other skills as in working in a team, being honest and trying to guide them away from the Criminal Justice System into … I’m going to do inverted commas with my fingers … into a so-called, I wouldn’t say normal life, but a life away from the Criminal Justice System.

I would say LandWorks works by giving people their self-respect back, self-worth back. Self-worth, I think, is a huge one. …so building their skills up, helping them work as a team. Truth … being truthful. Chris is very good about people being truthful and honest. It’s his main thing, I think. Well, it should be all of our main thing, but that always seems to come to light. To let them … help them … not to do things for them … to help them but to help them do it themselves so they’re learning themselves how to move forward in life, to live a life. Building trust with them. Building trust with people is huge isn’t it … building trust. I think everybody can move forward if they have self-respect, self-worth, dignity and can believe in themselves.

We listen to people. People need to be listened to. They need to be heard, and their opinions need to be valued as much as anybody else’s opinions. I think letting people do … I guess it’s the same with everything in life, they need to be doing something themselves, not just shown how to do it or have somebody watching over them all the time when they’re doing it. Let somebody do the job and then when they make the mistakes, they learn by their mistakes. I guess being honest and truthful and being yourselves, sharing parts … I think sharing part of your life is important as well. If people see that … well I’ll tell you what I feel in the workshop, if I’m opening up about my life, just day-to-day things or about my past life as well and the things that I did wrong and where I went wrong and how that affected myself, my family, people around me; and my attitude and views on things have changed, I guess how my moral compass has changed as well, I guess.

Well I guess looking back, I was like … at the time you don’t think about things or whatever and that, but when I was involved with the Criminal Justice System or when I was a criminal or whatever you call it, I guess … it’s a bit like when you’re in prison, when you’re in prison you become quite selfish for your own needs because it’s a bit of … if you don’t, you get walked all over … no, it’s not that … you get so little in prison, what you do get you want to hang onto, and I guess in previous years or whatever and that, although I was doing things and taking drugs and things that I shouldn’t have been doing, I wasn’t thinking about … I was just thinking about me really, I wasn’t really thinking about how that was affecting people around me or how it potentially affected people around me.

Now I think about the people around me all the time, all the time, constantly thinking about … especially my children and that, constantly thinking I shouldn’t do that, that’s not a very good lesson, and I think about how it affected my dad as well and how … yeah, he still, you know, still had that … what do they call it, unconditional positive regard, that a parent has for their children. I’ve always had that for my kids, I think, but I guess my actions haven’t been the best … they weren’t … they didn’t make me the best role model to them.

People who come to LandWorks need to be ready to change… I think if we’re all honest with ourselves or truthful with ourselves, whatever and that, you know yourself whether you’re ready for it or not, whether you’ve had enough or some people get to a certain age, I think, and they’re like I’m not going back into prison again, that’s it now, I can’t do it anymore, but it’s taken all those times to go wrong hasn’t it…

I think people build back their self-respect. It all goes back to that I think, they build back their own self-respect, their own self-esteem, self-worth. They don’t feel . I think a lot of people as well that come to LandWorks, whether it be in the workshops or the garden, they initially, I think, are oh I can’t do that, I’ve never done that, and then they sort of surprise themselves, and they surprise us as well sometimes…

LandWorks works because of the trust. It works because of trust. It works because of trust going both ways. It works because if we say we’re gonna do something we will do it. Even if something comes up … if Chris isn’t sure Chris will say yes we can help you do that or whatever and that, that might be a bit tricky, we’ll give it a go, but he’s honest with it and he won’t just say that. It works because … oh, I’m not saying this very well … we do what it says on the tin. If we say we’re gonna do something, we do it, we don’t just brush it under the carpet or not do it, or we’ll get as close to that as possible. We don’t bullshit people.

What worked for me when I first came here was … and I think I said this in my speech on the Open Day, was somebody asked me how I was and what they could do to help, and for four-and-a-half years nbody had asked me how I was. At LandWorks I was seen… you know, I’d been two years before I went to prison, I’d spent two-and-a-half years in prison, and nobody, not one person ever said to me like are you ok, what can we do to help?”