UCU Life Changers Text

Joe Baden
Goldsmiths
‘I had a geezer recently who just kept on saying, ’I’ve
got really low self-esteem.’ And I said to him: ’I used to
have low self-esteem. Do you know why? Because I was
a wanker. I was fucking horrible. I didn’t like myself and
nor did anyone else.’‘
If you want to join Joe Baden’s Open Book project,
kindly leave your excuses at the
door. They don’t work. If this project
to bring offenders into education is
about one thing, it is taking
responsibility for your actions.
‘We ask for no special favours,’
says Joe. ‘Everyone in the project
has to take responsibility for who
they are, where they’ve been, what
they’ve done, so that they can take
responsibility for their futures. If
you’ve done something wrong,
you’ve done something wrong. The
reasons don’t justify doing something wrong.’
Joe’s wrong thing was affray. After his conviction he
went to an education centre, albeit only to reduce his
imminent sentence. But his experience there aroused an
interest in learning. He eventually secured a place at
Goldsmiths College in London.
‘I felt more intimidated going to university than I did
the first time I walked onto a prison wing. I knew how to
carry myself on a prison wing; I didn’t know how to
carry myself at university. I’d go to a seminar and
concentrate so hard on getting the confidence to say
something that by the time I did, they were talking
about something completely different.’
Nearly a decade on from graduating and Joe
is still at Goldsmiths, coordinating the Open
Book project. Open Book provides a support
network for offenders, people with mental
health issues, substance abusers and others
to access further and higher education. Open
Book now has 116 people on its books at a
number of colleges and universities.
‘Here at Goldsmiths the project has just
grown and grown, from a very small project
run by one person to a very large network of
people,’ says Derfel Owen, who works for
Goldsmiths Students’ Union. ‘Joe is a hundred
million percent committed to the project,
because he’s seen first hand the positive
outcomes of being involved.’
‘People become really comfortable with themselves,
confident and contented, and drop all the shit,’ says Joe.
Four of the 15 departmental student awards at
Goldsmiths last year went to Open Book students.
The key to the project’s success is its avoidance of
patronising paternalism. Joe is a working class man from
working class Bermondsey and makes no apologies for
it. ‘We came at it from a very working class perspective.
There’s been a raft of work that’s been done on
widening participation, and yet it doesn’t seem to be
changing much. I remember participating in that sort of
research when I was on probation, and really playing
along with it. ’Deprivation and all that stuff, you
wouldn’t believe the poverty’. And all that crap. We
deconstructed the whole thing and started again.’
The result is a project that involves talks in prisons
and addiction agencies
’Everyone in the project
has to take responsibility
for who they are, where
they’ve been, what
they’ve done, so that they
can take responsibility
for their futures.’
about experiences before
and after education and a
six week taster course of
university life. It has
weekly drop-in sessions
where students can seek
each other’s support, plus
social events during the
week. Next on the
project’s to-do list is
careers advice.
Joe isn’t trying to
change people. He says education gives people a
chance to reflect on who they really are. ‘I certainly
wasn’t the person I was trying to be. I know that now. I
think it’s just a case of becoming the person you should
have been in the first place, having the freedom not to
be racist, and to turn round and say there’s nothing
wrong with me because I don’t like violence.’
Joe describes his work as 24/7—visiting prisons,
talking to organisations, trying to expand the project.
He helped organise a recent Open Book Conference
where representatives from universities around the
country expressed an interest in setting up similar
projects.
‘There’s so
much we’re trying
to do, it’s
incredible,’ says
Joe. ‘I think we’re
trying to change
the world, really.
People have
become so
evangelistic about
it. It’s almost
becoming like a
political
movement in
some respects.
‘There’s a real
belief among the project that the only way you’re ever
going to achieve social change is through education. It’s
the only sort of revolution that isn’t based on violence,
that isn’t based on resentment.’
And it’s one of the few solutions to deprivation right
now that isn’t based on excuses.
Canging
society
Joe Baden
Jackie Edwards
Alwyn Pugh
www.ucu.org.uk/lifechangers
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