Clean Break

This banner grew from a series of collaborative workshops centred around votes, voice, women and those who are excluded from voting. The group did extensive research and discovered a 1918 slogan, ‘Voteless NOT Voiceless, which they decided to reuse. They found a piece of 100-year-old linen and dyed it in the colours of the Suffragette movement. They then borrowed gestures which the group had created in a theatre exercise about power. As Clean Break works with women with lived experience of the criminal justice system and as prisoners in the UK are denied the vote, the group felt that there was still a lot to shout about.

40 years ago, Clean Break was founded by two women in prison who believed in the power of theatre to transform lives. Clean Break uses theatre to keep the subject of women in prison on the cultural radar, helping to reveal the damage caused by the failures of the criminal justice system. Through their unique work, we raise difficult questions, inspire debate, and help to effect profound and positive change in the lives of women with experience of the criminal justice system.

From a background in theatre design, literature and political science, Miriam Nabarro is an artist and scenographer, who creates politically and socially engaged work in theatre, printmaking, photography and participatory projects. She is Artist in Residence in the Development Studies Department at SOAS, University of London, associate artist with award winning 20 Stories High Theatre, a team member of Art Refuge UK’s projects in Northern France and a commissioned artist with Mothers Who Make. Much of her work is collaborative and participatory, with artists and academics and the general public.