Welcome to the dream that is LSW, the London Shakespeare Workout. Through the proven strength of our community outreach programme, the London Shakespeare Workout (LSW) Prison Project, a fully registered national charity with the Charity Commission of England and Wales (No. 1084717), we aim to be of service both to the theatrical profession and to the broader community at large. By virtue of an ever burgeoning series of varied incentives, actors, film-makers alongside offenders and ex-offenders of all ages, genders, races, creeds, nationalities and orientations are given opportunities to further explore and develop skills of self-expression and jointly enhance confidence through the glorious balm which is Shakespeare's language, as well as that of other major dramatic voices and thinkers and film-makers who have been inspired by the Bard throughout time.
The LSW Prison Project aims to utilise the language of Shakespeare (alongside that of other major dramatic voices/thinkers) as a tool; a stepping stone to change through effective interaction. For many offenders entitlement to such has been all but previously impossible. All too often disempowered by their own lives within (and formerly without) the prison, the glory and the power of Shakespeare's language (alongside that exemplified by other key dramatic forces) is something that the Prison residents can suddenly find for themselves; something they can share, and, most importantly, something which they can own. Their personal joy in that self-same discovery is something which can’t be taken away from them. The offenders at the various prisons within which the LSW Prison Project is privileged to participate will come to realise for themselves, through the wholly interactive LSW Prison Project activities, that Shakespeare's language and the social and emotional literacy it inspires in others is their own shared birthright: That it is, in every way, as much and as freely their own as it is for the professional performers beside whom they stand and with whom they directly interact. That joy and the increased confidence wrought for all through that realisation is, ultimately, the LSW Prison Project’s trade of fare.
Through carefully developed programmes and by employing the glorious balm of the Bard’s language as its glue, the LSW Prison Project strives in the most engaging manner possible to expand the interpersonal skills of all involved.