This April, Executive Director Sandra Barefoot attended the Global Justice Convening in Cape Town, South Africa. The event was hosted by the Incarceration Nations Network (INN) in partnership with the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. INN is a global network focused on prison reform and justice innovation, and ‘committed to transnational solidarity, intersectionality, […] ensuring that those directly impacted by the justice system lead the way to its radical reimagining’.
A key moment of the conference was the launch of the Global Freedom Consulting Agency, described as ‘the world’s first global consulting agency of leaders with lived experience of the justice system, empowered as the go-to experts for governments and civil society actors looking to engage in innovative justice reform work grounded in smart-on-crime approaches.’
We are looking forward to sharing more about this trip with you. Until then here’s one of the many artworks - ‘My Story’ by Hage Mukwendje - that Sandra had the pleasure of viewing in an exhibition of those who had been in prison.
Our team has delivered another impactful RESTORE Programme to women in HM Prison Eastwood Park, UK. The programme which among other practices uses the creative arts like storytelling, drawing and collaging, was facilitated by Executive Director Sandra Barefoot with storytellers Anne-Marie Cockburn and Raushia Coles.
Sandra said the following about one of the participants: “After Chloe shared her life story with such determination and courage to speak as she said, ‘I’ve never spoken all of this and I have to do it’, she returned the next day with this image in reflection. She said, ‘I feel much lighter now, a weight has been lifted off my shoulders’.
‘Why did no one see me drowning in an ocean of pain?’ - Chloe, RESTORE Participant
I felt this was such a poignant reflection as I sat with her the day before mapping her story through collage she was struggling to find the right images of hands to use at a particular place in her childhood that asked her to hold on, reach out and try to survive. This hand drawn in this reflection with these words presents another vital understanding of her story.”
The Forgiveness Café will be taking a two-month summer hiatus in July and August, making this our final online gathering until September.
Before the break, we’d love to warmly invite you to join us on the 24th of June for a compassionate conversation about forgiveness in everyday life. This event will provide a unique opportunity for compassionate conversations about forgiveness and its application to our relationships and everyday life. The session will be facilitated by a team that includes storytellers and members of our close network of peers.
Click the button below to find out more about this participatory online gathering and reserve your place.
Without Forster Communications it’s quite possible The Forgiveness Project would not be around today.
Founder, Marina Cantacuzino remembers their invaluable help:
“If activists need someone to light the fuse, Jilly Forster, founder and chief executive of ethical communications agency Forster Communications (pictured above with Archbishop Desmond Tutu), was that person for me. She believed that my idea of collecting humanising stories could go further and become not only an exhibition, but a charity too. With pro bono support from Forster Communications, the inaugural F Word exhibition launched at London’s Oxo Gallery in January 2004 and became a major success.”
On behalf of our entire organisation and our community: Thank you Forster Communications for believing in our work and supporting us all these years!
If you would like to support our work, you can donate here or via GlobalGiving (for tax-deductible donations in the USA).
For our most recent Forgiveness Café, we had the pleasure of being joined in co-facilitation by Actress and Dramaturgist Andreea Paduraru, who commissioned the gathering as a means of informing her latest creative project Labyrinth, which is a modern adaptation of the ancient Greek myth of Ariadne.
In mythology, Ariadne is often remembered as “the abandoned one” as she helps Theseus defeat the Minotaur and escape the Labyrinth, only to be left behind by him on a deserted island. This retelling imagines Ariadne twenty years later, finally confronting Theseus about his betrayal, after years of silence. As she faces him, she must grapple with a profound moral dilemma: revenge or forgiveness. What will she choose?
Speaking on her collaboration with us, Andreea shared the following:
“When working on the dramaturgy for this piece, I came across the brilliant work of the Forgiveness Project and joined the Café online sessions. I was so moved listening to the other participants’ stories and, in a strange way, relieved that I wasn’t alone because we all had faced the same challenges in the process of forgiving and asked ourselves similar questions - it had a big impact on me and informed my dramaturgy and really grateful to the team for their incredible work.”
Performances of Labyrinth are scheduled for 6.30pm BST on Monday and Tuesday, 22nd and 23rd of June at Rich Mix, London, UK. Please note that latecomers won’t be admitted and that the second performance will be filmed.
Date: Monday 22nd and Tuesday 23rd of June 2026
Time: 6.30pm BST
Location: Rich Mix, 35-47 Bethnal Green Road, London E1 6LA, UK
Tickets: £12
You can find out more information and purchase tickets by clicking the button below.
Review by Marina Cantacuzino
“I went to see Mass at the Donmar Warehouse [last week] having completely forgotten that I’d given the production company permission to use an extract from my book in the programme, so spotting that was a nice surprise!
The play is outstanding. The themes - the search for meaning after trauma, the need for answers and blame, the healing work of forgiveness - are ones I’m familiar with but Mass made them feel immediate and unsentimental. Written by Fran Kranz, it imagines a meeting years after a school shooting between the parents of the gunman and the parents of one of his victims. In real life, a conversation like this would most probably be carefully mediated through restorative justice. Here, the parents sit alone around a table and talk, the starkness of their encounter giving the play real force.
The staging is as precise as the writing. The floor rotates so slowly you barely notice it, shifting the audience’s perspective from one parent to another and quietly reminding us that every story depends on the lens through which you see it.”
Mass runs at the Donmar Warehouse in London, UK, until the 6th of June 2026.
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