Projects – Night Light Theatre

Working in a therapeutic unit at HMP Low Newton, I worked with Nightlight Theatre and a group of women prisoners to write and illustrate storybooks for their children or family members on the outside.

My role has been to introduce and explore visual storytelling in a fun, accessible and safe way, using various activities to imagine and create illustrations for their original stories. With some participants, I aided them in their own illustrations of the books, while with others I helped them to create storyboards which I then used to illustrate their stories, enhanced with their doodles and handwriting. I was also  honoured to be given photos of participants children to illustrate from.

Each participant came away with two copies of her own professionally printed book, one for herself and one to give to someone, and they collected them and shared them with great pride.

Night Light Theatre said ‘Thankyou to Lily Mae Kroese for her wonderful illustrations; Lily has been described as a “diamond” by our participants. Lily worked collaboratively with the women who had brilliant ideas of the style of characters they wanted.