Five members of the Parental Imprisonment Collective selected more than 200 artworks for this year’s Koestler Arts exhibition without details about the artists or their circumstances, according to the charity. The pieces were drawn from over 7,500 entries to the 2026 Koestler Awards submitted by people in prisons, secure hospitals, young offender institutions and other criminal justice settings across the UK. The curators, aged 18 to 35, shaped the show around themes including childhood, family, confinement and imagination across painting, drawing, sculpture, textiles, music, writing, craft and design. This marks the first time the annual exhibition has been curated by young adults with direct experience of parental imprisonment.
The Parental Imprisonment Collective, supported by Young Ambassadors from the Prison Advice and Care Trust, issued a joint statement explaining their approach. “We’ve come together to curate an exhibition that charts a journey of life from childhood onwards, and the different paths a life can take,” the group said. “We hope we’ve interpreted the work in a way the artists themselves would recognise. When people go through the exhibition, we want them to think differently about what it means to grow up with a parent in prison. We also want visitors to remember that everybody in prison was once a child too. They are not just the sum of their sentence.” The collective worked without knowledge of the artists’ identities, in line with a 2023 policy from His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service that the exhibition upholds.
Fiona Curran, chief executive of Koestler Arts, expressed satisfaction with the curation in a statement. The young adults chose pieces that moved, surprised and inspired them from thousands created in secure settings nationwide, she noted. Curran described the exhibition as remarkable and thoughtfully assembled for the Southbank Centre’s newly refurbished Undercroft space, where it will run with free admission.
Rock, Paper, Scissors opens on 16 October and runs until 29 November, Tuesday to Sunday from noon to 8pm, the organisers said. Selected works will be available for purchase via the Koestler Arts website, with donations supporting Victim Support. The exhibition continues a longstanding partnership between Koestler Arts and the Southbank Centre that has featured past curators including Ai Weiwei, Grayson Perry and Benjamin Zephaniah, according to the charity’s records.
The Prison Advice and Care Trust works with children and families affected by parental imprisonment while backing the collective’s efforts. Ministry of Justice figures published in 2024 place the number of children who had a parent in prison between October 2021 and October 2022 at around 193,000, according to the department’s linked data analysis. The exhibition seeks to challenge assumptions by focusing on the human stories within the artworks.
Koestler Arts has organised the awards since 1962 and has presented its London exhibition at the Southbank Centre for more than 15 years. The charity aims to promote creativity in criminal justice settings and provide recognition for participants beyond their sentences. Some of the displayed pieces address family, home and landscape while others explore confinement and personal journeys.
