Beyond the Walls

Visual Exchange is currently developing “Beyond the Walls”, a participatory audiovisual creation project for people in detention and people on pathways to reintegration in French-speaking Belgium. True to the approach it has pursued since 2018 with groups that are marginalized and often excluded from spaces of expression, this project makes media creation a tool for empowerment, dialogue, and the development of agency.

The initiative brings together groups that are usually kept apart: people detained in several prison facilities and a collective of people in reintegration. Participants create hybrid narratives, combining writing, voice, photographic collage, and visual fragments. Each group’s stories feed into the reflection and creative process of the others, gradually creating common ground between experiences that institutional walls usually keep separate.

At the heart of the approach lies a constant principle: participants reveal and represent themselves among peers. They speak for themselves, rather than through intermediaries, what they want to say, how they want to say it, and for whom. In a context where these groups are so often distanced from media representation—or made the object of media discourse without ever becoming its subject—this reversal of perspective takes on particular significance. The process draws equally on skills in critically analysing images and information, exploring one’s personal journey, and developing practical mastery of creative and production tools

Developed in close collaboration with partners working in the prison, social, and cultural sectors, “Beyond the Walls” brings together creation, reflection, and bringing participants’ voices to wider audiences. A dissemination phase, in the form of screenings and discussion sessions both inside and outside prison facilities, will extend the work carried out in the workshops and bring these stories into the public sphere.

This project marks an important step for Visual Exchange: the establishment, in French-speaking Belgium, of a participatory creative practice that has been tested and refined through nearly a decade of international collaborations.