Reshape Ceramics helps the insertion of ex-prisoners by producing ceramic pieces. They want to show society the talent we have in our prisons.
Reshape Ceramics is a social project that offers training and employment to people from the prison community. In practice, they train groups of inmates to learn how to produce ceramic pieces. Not only do they gain a skill during their years in prison, but they also have in this project a support for a restart of life in freedom.
“We like to repeat this mantra: we don’t hire people to make pottery, but we make pottery to hire people,” says Inês Tavares, project manager, in an interview with Peggada.
The production focuses on utilitarian pieces – tableware, bathroom accessories, and candles. “All our pieces are designed to be beautiful, simple, with quality and resistance, and useful. We want that when someone goes to one of our customers’ homes they ask about the bowl that is being used or the soap dish in the bathroom, because we want this topic to be discussed,” Inês adds.
All the pieces are handmade, with handcrafted techniques and in the most sustainable way possible.
The project has a workshop inside Caxias Prison and an atelier in Arroios, through which they give work to people who are in prison, accompanying them in their transition to freedom, and some of them also manage to hire outside as a transitional job. “We believe that empowering these people and using this time to rehabilitate rather than punish is the best way to decrease criminal recidivism, reducing crime, public spending, and helping to break cycles of violence and poverty,” she says.
Reshape Ceramics is a project of RESHAPE – whose mission is to ensure the dignified reinsertion of all people who are or have been imprisoned.
It all starts with a personal skills training program inside the Prison Facility (PE), in which classes of 20 people are trained. Of these, those who show interest in having work in the workshop are interviewed, and the mandatory requirements are: know how to speak and write Portuguese; want to live in the Lisbon area after release (to be able to continue the support); have an expected departure date of less than 2 years (preferential).
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This article addresses an action that promotes the reduction of inequalities, empowerment, and the social, economic, and political inclusion of all, regardless of age, gender, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion, or economic or other status.
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