If you want to know what’s going on in prison you have to read the walls. Most communication comes through some form of poster or official notice and every available space has a notice board; which is great if you can read, but not so good if, like a huge percentage of prisoners, you didn’t spend much time in school.

When I got to prison I used to read every notice religiously; everything from ‘official searching procedures’ to ‘gender dysmorphia treatment policy’. Mostly it filled some time, but there was also the paranoid fear that I might miss something important – like an act of parliament knocking a couple of years off my sentence. (Don’t scoff – it happens).

Most notices are dull photocopied affairs, so it makes a change when something colourful goes up. Soon after moving to my first long-term prison, I noticed a glossy poster on the education board. It was from the ‘Koestler Trust’. They were holding a national prison arts competition. I discussed it with the Art teacher. She told me this happened every year and was becoming increasingly popular – not least because of the cash prizes available for the best work.

I decided to enter. It wasn’t like I had a lot else to do. Quite a few of the other lads said they would too. One or two had even won awards previously and recommended it. Over the next few months, I made a selection from my best class work, and did a couple of pieces specially. These were then collated by the education department and sent off to the Koestler Trust.

That first year I entered four paintings and a couple of pieces of writing. After an anxious wait for the results, I won three or four third place and runner-up awards. Surprisingly I also sold two pieces. Just before Christmas I received my prize money, and bought a few extra luxuries: CDs, a couple of T shirts, a nice jar of coffee. But now I was hooked.

I entered the Awards every year from then on, and as the years passed I became increasingly aware of the key role the work of the Koestler Trust plays in the life of the prison population.

Firstly, it provides a goal. Something to get out of bed for. Motivation is a real problem in prison – especially for long-termers. When every day is exactly the same it is all too easy to think: ‘what’s the point?’ But the Koestler competition gives a shape to the year: creating and collating entries, sending them off, waiting for news, finding out the results, receiving feedback from the judges and celebrating any winnings.

But perhaps more importantly it gives prisoners a sense of self-respect.

The prospect of winning a little extra money might inspire the initial brush on canvas or pen to paper; but once the piece is finished the sense of achievement it brings should not be underestimated. Many times I have seen prisoners, who may never have achieved anything in their whole life, being genuinely moved at seeing a collection of their own creations. Sometimes it means such a lot that they can’t bear to send their work off to be judged – which might be a shame, but nevertheless it was Koestler that motivated them to do the work in the first place.

Before prison I wasn’t a typical offender. I didn’t have a drink or drug problem, I was well educated and I had a ‘proper’ job. But I nevertheless struggled with depression and low self-esteem, and I had a constant battle with crushing feelings of inadequacy. I was not used to getting any recognition for anything I did and I had no outlet for my creative abilities. Koestler changed all that. I won quite a few awards in prison, and the sense of achievement that brought was considerable. I discovered I might have the ability to write professionally, and now have a Koestler-appointed mentor to help me investigate that.

When you compare the impact of the Koestler Trust to its funding you cannot but conclude that it is stunning value for money. Indeed I would suggest that the Koestler Trust together with the Shannon Trust (who run the excellent Toe by Toe reading programme) between them contribute more to prisoner rehabilitation than any other prison initiative. Of course most prisons have education departments – but for many of them prisoner motivation is a major challenge. Many prisoners have such negative experiences of school that the idea of attending prison education is unthinkable – yet some of these same men will happily write a story or draw a picture to enter it for the Koestler Awards. I cannot overstate what an important thing that is.

Overall, prison can be a bleak place with few success stories. Thankfully the Koestler Trust is an exception. This is my ninth year entering the Koestler competition, and thankfully I have now been released. But the legacy of those annual competitions will stay with me forever.

Peter is a Koestler Awards entrant, prize winner and Scholar

You can find out more about the work of the Koestler Trust here.

Populism is a new force in European politics. Tearing up the ideological contours of the 20th Century, its exponents vary from the grievance politics of the radical right and the far left through to dangerous forms of extremism and nationalism, values-and issue-based campaigning and the virulent currents of anti-politics and distrust of elite political projects which are sweeping across Europe.

As the Policy Network and Barrow Cadbury Trust project into the relationship between populism, extremism and mainstream politics shows, underlying the growth of all these populist movements is a series of deep-seated stresses that come to bear on liberal democracy and its mainstream party systems. They are socio-economic, cultural and political in nature.

The conclusions of this extensive cross-European study into how the mainstream parties have responded, and where they have failed to date, underlined the importance of 3 related strategic responses:

Firstly, acknowledge the rise of populism as both a threat and a corrective to democracy. The rise of anti-immigrant and anti-EU populism, for example, should be taken as a signal that mainstream parties have not correctly acknowledged past mistakes or the levels of concern which surround these issues. Progressive political parties cannot simply evade or dismiss the perceived, imagined or real grievances related to identity, cultural dislocation and immigration. Acknowledgement is a precondition to countering myths, getting back in touch with voters and responding to the root causes of discontent. Reframing, ignoring the problem, or simply labelling “reluctant radicals” as ugly racists, fans the flames of populism.

Secondly, work extensively on a governing agenda driven by the acknowledgement of past failings. In essence, getting on with the difficult policy work of formulating strategies in relation to education; housing; social mobility; labour markets; skills and training; sectoral intervention; regulation, i.e. predistribution; community building; policing; public interest regulatory bodies; dispersal of power i.e mutual and co-operative councils; and tackling the EU legitimacy crisis.

Thirdly, ‘contact democracy’ as a strategic response to political distrust. This means championing initiatives, tools and organisations that engage citizens in political dialogue and participation.

The emphasis on acknowledging the problem and ‘improving government’ is nothing particularly new. Moreover, progressive governance has become even more difficult and complex in these times of crisis, with national governments holding less power due to the forces of globalisation and the constraints of the debt crisis on public finances. At the same-time, the digital revolution and technological innovation have left many mainstream political parties hollowed-out and lagging in the past. As The Financial Times commentator Philip Stephens points out, “the political mega-trend of recent decades has been the diffusion of power – from states to other actors and from old elites to citizens.”

The focus on contact democracy and new forms of voter engagement is therefore a crucial supplementary step to building new coalitions which can carry a popular and credible governing progamme. Politics needs to regain legitimacy and this means people feeling more ownership and engagement.

Amidst the cult reportage of the maverick figure-head Beppe Grillo, the often-missed point about the rise of the Five Star Movement in Italy has been their successful use of the internet to encourage grassroots co-ordination among activists at the local level. As Anthony Painter, the author of the final project report, puts it, they have “mastered a viral form of contact democracy”. Italian-based political scientist Duncan McDonnell has documented the use of new tools such as meetup.com, which have been very successfully used by the movement to mobilise and empower supporters. The Five Star Movement has many faults, but their internet and activist engagement success cannot be ridiculed.

To be sure, micro-democratic solutions and deliberative democracy forums do not offer the answers to the complex governing questions around growth and economic rebalancing. But the point is that political elites will soon lose their mandates to take on these difficult challenges with-out opening-up old clientele power structures and dispersing power more widely, embracing the digital revolution and new forms of campaigning and contact democracy. Progressive politics has to focus on the party of the future, not the party of the past.

Michael McTernan is deputy director of Policy Network @mmcternan

The UK’s minimum wage is to rise to £6.31 for adults and £5.03 for 18-to-20-year-olds with business secretary Vince Cable stating that “Nobody in the country should be paid less than the minimum wage”. Some commentators have raised the question of whether the minimum wage keeps up with the cost of living and this question is an interesting one, as despite the number of times it has been raised and words expended asking it, the answer is quite simple: alas, no. Since 2009 minimum wage increases have regularly fallen behind the rate of inflation leaving minimum wage earners paying more for goods and services without their wages rising in line with this. Vince Cable is just in saying that there is a wage that nobody in the country should be paid less than, but is this wage a minimum wage?

When we speak of the cost of living, this is often within the context of the welfare state and whether benefit payments are too great or too small. However, in-work poverty is common with many simply not earning enough to provide for themselves and their families. This is a problem that the younger sibling of the minimum wage, the living wage, looks to address.

When advocating the living wage, there is a tendency to separate between moral and economic benefits, however, any discussion should give consideration to both. Ensuring employees are paid a sum that doesn’t leave them living in poverty or on the brink of poverty is the ethical thing to do and is one of the soundest means of “making work pay”. Since the inception of the Living Wage Campaign in 2001, 45,000 have been lifted out of poverty as a result. More than just a concept that politicians pay lip service to, the living wage has elicited change in the way its advocates intended, and with the Trust for London estimating that all low paid workers in London alone being paid the living could save the government £823 million per annum, the economic benefits are apparent.

Young workers are much more likely than their older counterparts to be working for a low wage. In addition to this, there is the expectation that many young people work for no pay as a precursor to finding a paid position. Whilst youth unemployment continues to rise, in many sectors young people are pressured to take on unpaid positions simply to get their foot in the door.

As an intern I’m highly aware of the trope of the suffering unpaid intern, forever bearing a heavy load of work that should be assigned to a paid staff member. Tanya De Grunwald of Graduate Fog has waged a war against this calling out organisations that take on unpaid interns for positions that should be filled by paid staff. One firm that has incurred her wrath is French fashion house Balenciaga for their request for unpaid sales assistant interns; a position involving all the features of working as a sales assistant with none of the financial returns. An option only available to those financially stable enough to generate no income for a prolonged period of time.

In a period where youth employment prospects are particularly low, many see these unpaid options as a necessary stepping-stone. At first glance it may seem counter-intuitive to spend four weeks working as a sales assistant for no pay, but the opportunity to say that you’ve worked for a high-brow fashion house may be just what someone wishing to crack the seemingly impenetrable world of fashion is looking for.

What this says about employment prospects is sad, at a time when youth unemployment is rising; numerous organisations take advantage of a desire for that coveted concept – experience.

An adoption of the living wage for all workers including interns is not something that will happen overnight, but whilst it is accepted that some people are paid less than they need to survive on, or nothing at all, the problem of in-work poverty will continue to increase and some sectors will continue to have barriers to entry which exclude those from a lower socioeconomic background. Organisations becoming living wage employers begin to solve these problems and in doing so, they step closer to becoming ethical workplaces that practise equality and diversity through genuinely facilitating inclusion.

The City of Sanctuary movement, although flourishing in a growing number of UK cities, is relatively unknown to many people in the voluntary sector and even less so among the general public.

This was certainly the case for us at the Piers Road Centre in Birmingham when just over a year ago Indrajit Bhogal, one of our volunteers, mentioned that a relative had pioneered the idea in Sheffield in 2007. After outlining the basic concept she ended rather challengingly with “….why don’t we start one in Birmingham?”

Enquiries revealed only Shari Brown of RESTORE and former head of the city’s Wardlow Road Centre for Migrants, Adrian Randall, knew anything about it, but both were keen to join us in an initiative. Within a few weeks we found ourselves taking the lead for what hopefully will turn out to be a flourishing branch in Birmingham.

The national website shows what is happening elsewhere and the stage participating cities have reached. In Birmingham a series of meetings attended by an increasing number of enthusiasts, has distilled a draft strategy to move forward simultaneously on three fronts in order to develop support:

1. Raising awareness and improving public understanding of forced migration in order to generate more welcoming responses to newcomers. The Birmingham group’s existence is a start and telling people about our purpose will begin to spread the word, but there is a job to do using all available media to educate the public about issues such as forced migration. We have prepared a leaflet to make people think about the idea of welcome and are developing web pages and details of opportunities to participate as we identify more people interested in the concept.

2. Encouraging community organisations to take actions which generate a welcome or recognise the contribution that migrants make. Engaging with existing welcome groups will help us to move forward and perhaps help them to expand their volunteer base. We are seeking to expand a group of people who are able to visit and make presentations to community groups and to this end are preparing a basic presentation that can be used ‘off the shelf’. Such visits would provide an opportunity to let individuals and groups sign a pledge of support.

3. Seek public support from large organisations for the City of Sanctuary principles, whilst assisting them to examine their policies and practices from this welcoming perspective. Starting with large voluntary organisations such as Housing Associations and commercial organisations that espouse social responsibility we should gain formal support and help those organizations to take steps to be more positively welcoming to migrants. So a pledge should include action that an organisation will publicly sign up to.

The accolade for individual city of sanctuary branches is when their respective local authority passes a formal resolution proclaiming itself to be a ‘City of Sanctuary’. To this end we are maintaining close contact with Birmingham City Council to achieve such a resolution.

In this respect we have a major ally in Councillor Waseem Zaffar, Chair of Birmingham City Council’s Social Cohesion and Community Safety Overview and Scrutiny Committee. Coun. Zaffar has been a keen supporter of our efforts, and at a meeting of the city council on 5th February this year the council passed the following resolution put forward by Coun. Zaffar’s committee: ‘The City Council should explore the appetite to achieve City of Sanctuary status with organizations across the city, and strive towards gaining this title if supported’. Officers have been instructed to deliver a preliminary report back to the council for September this year – and we are now working with city officers to meet this timescale. Great oaks grow from little acorns, and we believe good progress is being towards establishing Birmingham as a City of Sanctuary.

Dennis Minnis OBE is Project Manager at the Piers Road New Communities Centre in Handsworth, Birmingham

Michael Mendelson is now Senior Scholar at the Caledon Institute of Social Policy.

You can find out a bit more about why we’re launching a new blog platform here. I think it’s fair to say that while our new publication illustrates how the Trust has retained constancy of purpose, this blog represents part of the Trust’s willingness to embrace change in the tools we use to communicate.

If you don’t already do so, you can also follow the Trust on Twitter @BarrowCadbury.

Paul Evans is Communications Manager at the Barrow Cadbury Trust.