Back in February 2023, I wrote a post about my donation of a 1960s bottle of Madame Rochas to Mike O'Shaughnessy, a senior lecturer in Graphic Design and Illustration at John Moores University, who is also passionate about fragrance. He added it to his collection of vintage perfume to use in workshops with inmates as an olfactory trigger of memories of their past, encouraging them to write stories or draw pictures evoked by the scents. I am a firm believer that rehabilitation is a necessary component of prison life, and salute Mike for coming up with such a novel and engaging initiative.
Madame Rochas does time...travelling, as the Perfume Stories workshops go "inside"
Out of the blue Mike DM-ed me the other day with a link to a recent article by The Guardian's North of England correspondent, Hannah Al-Othman, about his scent project, which is happily still going strong, and I thought to share it here.
Liverpool academic's scent workshops help prisoners remember their past
It looks like the project has really taken off since I last talked to Mike two years ago: he has trained prison staff to deliver the workshops now, for example, and while they are still part of English lessons in most prisons, they have been rolled out to other courses in HMP Holme House in Stockton-on-Tees, namely hospitality, business studies and barbering. Also, a company called Carvansons has since come on board, creating bespoke scents in response to requests from offenders who wish to capture a particular scent from their childhood, say.
I am not sure whether Madame Rochas has done her time now, and the scent collection is completely different these days, in which case she may be released back into my custody one day...;)
How wonderful! I love that there are people out there actively making this world a better place
ReplyDeleteYes, Mike really is a pioneer where scent meets social work!
DeleteWhile I think it's cool that that experiment you contributed to was publicized (though, they could have mentioned your contribution - just saying ;) ), thinking about it now, I realized that I am not sure I agree with it.
ReplyDeletePeople who are in prison are not there by chance. These are not some underprivileged poor soles that need our compassion. Prison is not supposed to be pleasant or entertaining. There are so many people outside of penitentiary system who work hard day in day out and do not have access to this type of classes or enrichment.
Well, let's hope this education will help their rehabilitation.
Hi Undina,
DeleteI understand your concern, and do also believe in the need for punishment. In some cases people are so corrupt and evil that rehabilitation is out of the question anyway. But there are others who have had a bad start in life (and there has been some kind of broken home / abuse in pretty much all their backgrounds) then taken a wrong path or fallen in with the wrong crowd, who may be amenable to a constructive approach. Having watched some documentaries on penal reform and spoken to Mike, it seems that UK prisons are pretty much a "finishing school for criminals" and offenders come out of there worse than they went in. There is also a lot of radicalisation of terrorists that goes on inside, which is another issue related to the disproportionately high number of foreign national prisoners. But from all I can ascertain our rates of recidivism generally are terrible, and rehabilitation is the only way to stop people boomeranging in and out of jail, which will save money on incarceration in the long run, and deliver individuals who contribute to the economy, instead of lapsing back into crime.