Beating Time

Beating Time is an award-winning charity helping people survive a prison sentence and thrive on the outside. Set up in 2014, we run two programmes which help people put prison behind them and build lives they want to live. Choirs Beating Time runs weekly singing and songwriting groups. We work to improve mental health and build social inclusion, helping people inside find a sense of belonging. Inside Job is a small but highly effective in-prison recruitment consultancy. It is designed and run by and for people who have served a sentence, matching work-ready prisoners with employers. Our two programmes are connected: people who feel excluded and have poor mental health cannot find, or make, work. Prison affects huge numbers of people in the UK: the inside, the released each year and the children with a parent in prison. We are spending millions building more prisons when other countries are closing theirs and cutting crime. Prison, as we do it, does not reduce crime and damages our society. All our programmes reinforce non-criminal identity, whether as singers, songwriters, performers, entrepreneurs, workers or parents. We believe in the people we work with and invest in them creatively, emotionally and financially. We create the opportunity for them to contribute, on lots of levels: to their prison community as performers, to their families at our Family Days, and to the workforce, through Inside Job. By retaining a sense of self and creating opportunities we generate hope and motivation.@Beating_Time info@beatingtime.org