Empowering Prisoners through Entrepreneurship at HMP Askham Grange

A workshop, designed and delivered by Dr James Stockdale, focused on fostering an entrepreneurial mindset among the prisoners, providing them with tools and strategies to identify and develop business ideas.

During the session, prisoners were introduced to a structured approach to identifying and describing business ideas. The interactive workshop encouraged participants to explore and develop their own entrepreneurial concepts, with a particular focus on addressing societal problems and challenges specific to the prison environment, such as the 'revolving door' phenomenon.

Successful business leaders from the region also took part, to provide an insight into running and growing a business. 

Louise Toal from The Distance, spoke about the fundamentals of business, including finance, marketing, and operations. 

Liam Wright, from EXODUS, covered the different types of companies, with a focus on limited and community interest companies. He talked about funding, access to expertise and business accelerators. He said: “I was utterly thrilled to be invited to speak to the prisoners at HMP Askham Grange. As an entrepreneur in tech innovation that has had a very different journey into tech and leadership than most of my peers, I am constantly looking for opportunities to speak to and workshop ideas with individuals with exciting ideas that perhaps share in my experience of having an atypical starting position. The level of creativity and ambition on display was humbling. I got the chance to sit on a one-to-one basis with some of the entrepreneurs to review their business plans in detail, offering some support on potential avenues to funding, access to expertise relating to their specific needs, incubator programmes and much more. Not only were there some stand-out legitimate business plans, but I was humbled to witness the dedication towards, and genuine intention to execute on, that plan when the time comes. All in all, clearly a worthwhile initiative, which I look forward to seeing grow.”

Lisa Kaye and the staff at Askham Grange were instrumental in creating a supportive and welcoming environment, ensuring the success of this initiative. The workshop participants displayed remarkable engagement, demonstrating strong entrepreneurial potential and a keen awareness of both societal and prisoner-specific issues.

One prisoner who attended the workshop said “This talk was particularly inspiring and pertinent to me. I took all of the great information and advice away that has given me a new confidence not only in my business idea, but actually where I can find funding and what I need to do to access this money. It is also refreshing to have people come into this environment, be open, approachable and genuinely want to help and support new start-up ideas but also be able to deliver ‘golden nuggets’ of information. I feel super motivated and can’t wait to get to work!”

The initiative underscored the significant role that entrepreneurship can play in prisoner rehabilitation, offering a pathway to reduce recidivism and contribute positively to society.