Creativity in Conflict and Confinement

Moving discussion at Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival examining a joint project between the Imperial War Museum and Liberty to look at creativity in war and imprisonment.

The catalyst had been the experience of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was on the panel, of getting Liberty material she had collected over the years, sent to her when she was imprisoned in Iran and the benefits of being able to be creative during that time. She talked about how she had shared the material with fellow inmates and other creative endeavours they had shared.

James Bulgin and Rebecca Newell from the museum brought an insight into how Zaghari-Ratcliffe's experiences had chimed with their collection and they shared other moving stories of creativity in confinement with illustrations form the collection.

Ester Coen, an art historian who has been working with Liberty on their 150th anniversary celebrations talked about the idea of working with Zaghari-Ratcliffe to design three textiles incorporating ideas from the collection with her experiences. I was particularly moved to hear that some of that material is being made into packs to take into women's prisons for the inmates to make clothes to sell.