Evaluating the Story Exchange Project: A participatory arts-based research project with Mountjoy Prison Inmates and Maynooth University in partnership with Gaisce - The President's Award

Researcher: 

• Meaney, Sarah
  
  

This article evaluates the Story Exchange Project, a pioneering initiative developed through a partnership between Mountjoy Prison, Maynooth University, and Gaisce – The President’s Award. The project brought together young people incarcerated in Mountjoy Prison’s Progression Unit and Maynooth University Access Programme students for a 13-week series of peer-to-peer workshops aimed at fostering empathy, challenging stereotypes, and promoting social inclusion. Using Narrative 4’s story exchange methodology, participants engaged in dialogical and arts-based practices, culminating in a collaborative creative output—a short animation. The evaluation employed qualitative methods, including researcher participation, focus groups, and stakeholder interviews, to explore expectations, experiences, and perceived outcomes. Findings indicate that the project successfully dismantled preconceptions, enhanced confidence and self-esteem among prison participants, and broadened educational horizons for both groups. Stakeholders highlighted the project’s potential for replication across other prisons and universities as a model for widening participation and supporting reintegration through education. The article situates the Story Exchange within international literature on prison–university partnerships and argues for its role in advancing empathy education and social justice in the Irish context.

Meaney, S. (2026) Evaluating the Story Exchange Project: A participatory arts-based research project with Mountjoy Prison Inmates and Maynooth University in partnership with Gaisce - The President’s Award, The Journal of Education on the Margins, 1 (1), 77 - 121, available: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18350482