| AdminHistory | Initially founded as a partnership between Saul Hewish and Chris Johnston in 1999 before acquiring Registered Charity and CLG status in 2003, Rideout is a leading organisation in developing arts-based approaches to working with people in prison and staff working in UK prisons. Prior to the formation of Rideout, Hewish had founded, and served as director of Geese Theatre (established in 1987), as deputy director of Geese Theatre USA, and worked with youth offending organisations, social services departments, and special educational settings in the UK under the banner of Acting Out. Prior to co-founding Rideout, Johnson had had a long career in community theatre, including founding and running Insight Arts Trust from 1989 to 1999 and the Round Festival. Insight worked with the Probation Service, producing arts programmes for prison and probation contexts. Though initially working solely with people in the criminal justice system, from 2014, Rideout has adapted some of their workshops for use with non-offending populations. Since Chris Johnston’s death in 2017, Saul Hewish has been the sole chief executive and artistic director.
Rideout began work exclusively in HMPYOI Swinfen Hall, conducting drama-based workshops in collaboration with prison staff over an eight year period (1999-2007). Alongside this work, Rideout worked in several other institutions such as HMP Dovegate, HMP Birmingham and HMPYOI Drake Hall on Repeating Stories (2002), a cross-artform project which resulted in the production of kinetic sculptures. The success of this project led to Rideout receiving core funding from ACE between 2003 and 2011. Rideout continued to work on projects with people in prisons including The Means of Production (2003-2005), The Creative Prison (2005-2008) and Say Goodnight to the Bad Guy (2007-2009).
Between 2009 and 2018, Rideout worked on and produced Talent 4, a project which consisted of ‘strength-based’ workshops to identify things that participants were good at to improve employability. The workshops were run a total of 85 times, and used across Europe with groups including people in prison and with experience of the criminal justice system, adults in long-term unemployment and autistic people.
During this nine year period, Rideout ran several other projects, including: Go to Jail (2010-2016), a touring replica of a prison cell with two actors with experience of prison ‘living’ in it; a five-week residency featuring music and drama titled A Bigger Sound (2011) and the Argument Room (2011-2013), a monthly debate forum hosted by Chris Johnston.
In 2016, Rideout began their ongoing project The Social Agency. This project is an arts-based support group for autistic adults and people with mild learning disabilities in Stoke-on-Trent and North Staffordshire. This includes a series of podcasts created by participants under the title ‘Remote Operations’.
Alongside The Social Agency, Rideout continued to work with people in prison in several projects including Past Time (2018) which explored the history of prison food, the success of which led to Staging Time (2019), a project consisting of three performing arts residencies exploring aspects of prison history, and 28 Days, a series of drama workshops in HMP Hewell looking at means of maintaining family relationships.
In 2020, Rideout produced 28 Days, a series of drama workshops in HMP Hewell, looking at means of maintaining family relationships. This was done by the creation of stories about three characters, with the resulting material used to produce a booklet and website which consist of the stories and advice about how to deal with the challenges faced by the characters. The booklets are currently given out as part of the induction process in HMP Hewell (as of 2024).
This history does not account for every project undertaken by Rideout since their founding, and information about all their work can be found within the project specific descriptions and Rideout’s own website.
|
| Arrangement | The catalogue is arranged into five primary series – Administrative History, Projects, Publications and general press, Non-Rideout material and Personal.
Administrative papers contains documentation primarily relating to the administration of the company. This includes board minutes, non-project specific funding and budgets and other records produced by Rideout in their daily business, which did not form part of the documentation of specific projects. Much of this material is currently closed to comply with legislative and regulatory requirements, but will be opened following an appropriate closure period.
The Projects series contains documentation relating to projects, workshops and conferences conducted and undertaken by Rideout. This is divided into sub-series referring to major projects. A sub-series (BTC362/2/19) also contains documentation concerning commissioned workshops and conferences which were not part of the main projects undertaken by Rideout.
Project sub-series (BTC362/2/1-18) is further divided into Administrative Documentation, Production Documentation, Marketing and Publicity, Feedback and Press. Administrative Documentation contains records pertaining to the administration of each project, for example funding correspondence. Production documentation contains records and items directly produced during the projects both by practitioners from Rideout and participants. This includes artwork, material used during exercises and daily schedules. Marketing and Publicity contains items such as posters, flyers and leaflets used to promote the projects, either to participants or to audiences. Feedback and Evaluation contains documentation completed or produced by participants, audiences or evaluation bodies pertaining to the project. Press contains press regarding the project.
The Publications and General Press series contains monographs, books and articles produced by Rideout (in all current cases either Saul Hewish or Chris Johnston), and press material that was not directly related or associated with a specific project in the collection.
Non-Rideout material consists of documentation of work primarily produced by members of Rideout under different organisations. The majority of this is material produced by Acting Out, the company name used by Saul Hewish whilst working in a freelance capacity. Some of the records in this series relates to material produced by organisations other than Rideout, and which neither Saul Hewish or Chris Johnston worked.
The final series, Personal, contains records primarily related to the two founders – Saul Hewish and Chris Johnston – but do not concern their work either for Rideout or for another organisation.
Where possible, original order has been maintained to reflect the day to day business operations of Rideout, however some artificial arrangement has been undertaken by the archivist in consultation with the donor organisation.
This was done for several reasons. Due to conservation reasons, the audiovisual material had to be artificially separated to allow digitisation before cataloguing began. As a consequence, audiovisual material has been located within a file within each project. Some artificial arrangement was also undertaken by the archivist to better facilitate access for researchers and ensure that material was clearly associated with Rideout’s projects. For example, where material from one project was received by the archive within a wider tranche of material concerning a different project, this was artificially rearranged once it had been established that it was not originally held with that project for a specific, business reason. The five primary file arrangements within each project sub-series was also chosen by the archivist to better enable access.
|