『The Glasshouse - Helping women in custody grow』のカバーアート

The Glasshouse - Helping women in custody grow

The Glasshouse - Helping women in custody grow

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概要
 The Glasshouse is using horticulture, employment and a deep connection with nature to give women leaving prison something they often desperately need: dignity, confidence and the chance to build a different future. I am joined by co-founder Kali Hamerton-Stove alongside Ri, who came through the programme herself and now works on the senior team. A plant needs the right conditions, nourishment, care, light and time. Give it those things and given the opportunity, it grows. For Kali Hamerton-Stove, co-founder of The Glasshouse, this has become the foundation of an extraordinary social enterprise supporting women approaching the end of their prison sentences. The Glasshouse began with disused greenhouses at HMP East Sutton Park, an open women's prison in Kent. Kali's friend Melissa had visited the prison and was struck by how difficult life could be for women approaching release. Finding safe housing and employment was a huge challenge, while the stigma attached to having been in prison created another barrier to rebuilding a life. The unused greenhouses suggested a possibility. Could they become somewhere women could learn horticultural skills, gain work experience and begin to imagine life beyond custody? Kali, whose own background is rooted in horticulture and a lifelong relationship with plants, helped develop the idea into a business plan. The proposal was put to the Ministry of Justice in 2020, and within around six weeks the first cohort of women was working with the Glasshouse. The organisation has since developed into a commercial social enterprise, growing and nurturing houseplants and providing interior landscaping and plant maintenance for corporate clients. Women receive horticultural training and experience while still in custody, and the Glasshouse continues to support them after release with employment and the transition back into society. But the story of the Glasshouse is about much more than horticulture. It is about what happens when someone is given the conditions in which they can rediscover their own value. Ri knows this from experience. She joined the Glasshouse programme while she was in custody, initially coming out on day release to work either in the shop or at the growing facility. It was in the growing facility that she says she "found her feet". Her explanation of why is particularly revealing. "When women find themselves in custody," she explained, "I think what we lose is dignity, privacy and value." In the growing facility, something changed. She could work alone. She could care for plants that needed her. She could organise them, nurture them and watch them grow. The plants gave her a sense that she was needed, and therefore that she had value. "I could be alone there, so I could be brave enough to allow certain thoughts to come to the forefront that I might not be able to do whilst in custody," she said. And yet she was not really alone. "Although I was alone, I was surrounded by plants, so I had company." It is difficult to think of a more succinct description of the human value of nature connection. Ri went on to explain that the Glasshouse invests in the woman rather than simply assessing the skills she already possesses. The organisation does not assume that a woman's previous life tells you what she is capable of becoming. Through the work, Ri discovered transferable skills she had never recognised in herself. She gained a City & Guilds qualification in horticulture and eventually moved from participant to employee. She has now worked with the Glasshouse for more than two and a half years after release. Her journey is not presented as a neat transformation in which prison is followed by an uncomplicated new life. Ri is candid that coming out of custody was difficult. Having choices again was challenging. But she had something many women leaving prison do not: continuity, a workplace, people who understood what she had experienced, and the opportunity to develop her skills within an environment where she was already known. That experience now enables her to support other women coming through the programme. The most moving part of our conversation came when Ri described how her relationship with nature itself had changed. In custody, she explained, women can be almost completely removed from the natural world. Some may spend as much as 23 and a half hours a day in their cells. Exercise yards can be concrete spaces surrounded by razor wire. Some women may not even be able to see the sky from their rooms. Then comes The Glasshouse. Suddenly there are plants. Soil. Growing things. Trees. Green. "I see green differently," Ri told me. "I also see trees differently." Then she said something that was really touching, and it is something that underpins the principle flowing through biophilia: "I know that I'm held by it." Held by nature. She described knowing that on a difficult day, during a difficult hour, or even during five difficult minutes, nature holds her....
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