February 8, 2023 • 29 mins
When Phoebe was released from prison, she got busy looking for work, submitting applications for dozens of jobs in her quest to start life afresh.
But as she applied for jobs in a competitive job market, Phoebe’s passion for creativity, her university degrees and her experience as a graphic designer were no match for the stigma of a prison stint.
That is, until she came across one social enterprise creative agency - Green Fox Studio.
Hear Phoebe’s story, and how the business model works for Green Fox Studio, who are offering women a career path that starts before they even leave prison, in the latest episode of Getting it Right with Craig Foster.
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Getting it Right is a Jobsbank podcast, produced by Deadset Studios, hosted by Craig Foster.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Craig Foster (00:04):
Amanda Shepherd always loved art and design. She's been a
professional graphic designer and design teacher for decades now, but
she always felt something was missing.
Amanda's upbringing wasn't perfect. No one's is, but it was
a better life brimming with better opportunities than what's afforded
to many other people. When Amanda realized this, she knew
(00:27):
she wanted to do something about it. But what
I'm Craig Foster and this is Getting it right, a
podcast that dives into the stories of people and businesses
who are hiring, buying and working with purpose.
Amanda Shepherd (00:50):
My name is Amanda Shepherd and I am one of
the co founders of Green Fox Studio and Green Fox
Training Studio.
Craig Foster (00:59):
It's wonderful to have you Amanda and I'm so looking
forward to delving into the incredible work that you're doing.
Can we just perhaps start at the beginning of your
graphic design career. How did it begin?
Amanda Shepherd (01:12):
I guess design was one of those things that when
you're a, when you're a relatively poor student and have
struggled to find, you know, your niche in the world.
Being creative was one of those outlets that I had
as a kid. And
and it also, you know, with, with my childhood and
(01:35):
being an only child, I suppose creativity was just the
one thing that I used to use to um to
fill my time. And as I became a teenager and,
you know, they were fairly turbulent years ahead, creativity became
a bit of an escape for me. And you know,
(01:57):
at the
Craig Foster (01:57):
and without that being a negative thing, I think what
I found was that I could use this, I could
harness this creativity to actually create something really beautiful and
for it to be not only a release, but well
perhaps it could be a career and
Amanda Shepherd (02:15):
and yeah, I think that I really, I think that
in those later teen years I really, really focused on
making something, making something out of out of that and
and so I was quite driven to want to be
a designer. Um and and yeah, look, I have been
(02:36):
a graphic designer now for 25 years, so
I love it, it's an amazing profession, we're so fortunate
to be able to do something that we love as designers.
You now have this extraordinary foundation that you work in
the prison system helping inmates.
Craig Foster (02:56):
So how did you make that leap from, I really
want to use my skills to benefit other people who
are less fortunate or perhaps in this case in some
type of personal trouble across to the actual, you know,
the prison system and this concept of rehabilitation?
Amanda Shepherd (03:15):
At the time that I did make the leap, I
suppose I was working with my now co founder Kelly
Willmott um in media and I was on a maternity
leave contract there and I think, you know, Kelly and
I had hit it off and we formed this this
great bond um
(03:37):
and I kind of expressed how I was feeling about,
loved being a designer, loved being creative, but didn't like,
you know, selling things really, that's that wasn't where I
was at and she was in, in a space that
she was feeling somewhat similar, you know, in that is
(04:01):
there a greater purpose or something? I don't know what
it was. Um
and at the time I had the opportunity to to
start up a pilot program out at one of the
prisons here in Queensland just to test the waters and
see whether digital skills could be taught to prisoners whether
(04:22):
we could do this because, you know, there's there's no
computers in prisons generally as a rule and digital skills
are not taught to prisoners. So I went out there
and I remember sitting there
And interviewing around 50 inmates for the potential positions in
the pilot program and just being so blown away by
(04:46):
their enthusiasm. And it was, we held the interviews like
real job interviews, they had to come with a completed
design brief, they had to show some examples of their
work and talk through what it was that they wanted
to get out of the program. And at the end
of that day we'd selected about nine candidates to start
(05:11):
up the pilot program.
Craig Foster (05:13):
What do you do in these classes? What are you
teaching the inmates?
Amanda Shepherd (05:17):
So we started off by teaching predominantly the Adobe Creative
Cloud suite of programs. So In design, Illustrator and Photoshop that
was that was our mainstay. And that was particularly because
that's where Kelly's and my experience came from. So they
(05:40):
were the programs that we'd used throughout our career, and
of course being a social enterprise, we needed to generate
work so that we could actually pay for our time
to go in and train the prisoners. So we had
to be training them in work that we already knew
(06:01):
how to do because we just didn't have the time
to be able to teach, you know, to reinvent the
wheel per se. Um
and that was predominantly I guess in in corporate designs.
So um we do annual reports, we do logos, um
(06:22):
a lot of, a lot of corporate collateral and brochures
and things like that, which which is how we kind
of kicked off the business. And then once we were
actually in the prison studio we were able to nurture much
larger um interests I suppose because these guys had so
(06:47):
much time to dedicate to learning their programs that they
actually became mentors in their own rights. So what we
found that was that we had around 30 trainees in
the studio
um each morning and then 30 in the afternoon. So
(07:10):
we'd have some full time, so they would work across
the morning and the afternoon shift and then we'd have
trainees that would come in in the morning shift and
a different set of trainees that would come in in
the afternoon shift. So what happened was the full timers,
they started teaching and mentoring the newer participants, which is
how we were actually able to increase our numbers. Um
(07:34):
and then they would start learning different programs. They started
learning more programs way more than we knew. So they
started learning, you know motion graphics 3D Modeling. Um We had,
you know, we had people that had learned to code
from reading books, so they actually never sat at a
(07:56):
computer before and all of a sudden they had this
opportunity to put all of this knowledge into actual practical
skills and they were actually coding apps for us whilst
we were in there. Um you know, we saw some
real incredible talent in a diverse range of creative industries.
(08:18):
So
what Kelly and I started looking at was well how
do we nurture all of these different skill sets because
not everyone's going to go in and become a graphic
designer when they leave, but what skills can they actually
take with them that can transfer across into their life
once they leave prison. So it could be that, you know,
(08:40):
they had really fantastic project management skills or maybe they
had I. T. Skills or you know, perhaps they were
fantastic writers or whatever that may be. So when we
kind of looked at that the vast array of of
men that were working in that studio at the time,
we went this is incredible like this could be, this
(09:03):
is just like a workplace, these skills are so transferable,
we need to do this, You know, we need to
do this elsewhere. We need to help lots of people.
We can do this. There's there's no limits to what
we can do.
Um, so, you can imagine as, as, you know, business owners,
there's one thing, but but also as the charity, um,
(09:26):
we thought, you know, we we felt a real sense
of pride and accomplishment because we could see that what
we were doing was having real immediate impact. And we
were directly working with the people whose lives we were
impacting
and we would hear from their, their families, you know,
they would follow us on facebook and they would, you know,
(09:49):
they comments and it was lovely, you know, it was
really nice to actually see that all of this time
and these sleepless nights were actually paying off.
Craig Foster (10:04):
Tell us about some of those who have moved on
from the program and and who who are continuing with you.
Amanda Shepherd (10:11):
Yeah, look, we have so many great stories Craig I um,
but it is very much about breaking down that institutionalization
and seeing people as the people that they are, you know,
is that they were meant to be rather than their crime.
I think one of the, one of the things that
(10:32):
I didn't realize when I went to work inside, you know,
behind the bars was that um, prisoners are not actually rehabilitated.
There's not, there's not a large focus on rehabilitation. The
focus is largely on removing those people from the community
(10:54):
where they are deemed to be a risk or, you know,
whatever that may be to the community or to themselves
or and once they're incarcerated, they're just,
there's just not a lot of rehabilitation happening there. And
that surprised me because I think, I think I'd always
thought quite naively that, well, you know, obviously when you
(11:18):
go to prison, you spend a lot of time working
on yourself. That's for those people that actually have the
awareness and the insight to be able to do that.
It's not facilitated. Um, and I think that there's so
much that can happen in terms of the participants being
able to work on themselves if they provided the right
(11:44):
means, I guess it's being able to see those things,
seeing seeing achievements, seeing that they are able to do
something that maybe they didn't believe. Um, you know, if
you're always told that you can't do something, you do
start to believe it. But if you're told that, well,
maybe that didn't work. But what about what about that?
(12:05):
What about you give that a try, then you start
to see that. Okay. You know, there are, there's other
ways and
we have, I mean, our statistics would speak for themselves.
So we've trained almost 170 inmates and um, up until,
(12:26):
and I apologize, my statistics aren't, you know, as recent,
but up until September last year, 29 of those inmates
in the previous 12 month period had been released and
only one had re offended. So in terms of what
we're looking at, you know in in recidivism rate, the
(12:49):
average recidivism rate around in Queensland anyways about 47%. You know,
it's it's near 50%. So when you look at our statistics,
we're talking about less than 4%.
Craig Foster (13:02):
What about the world outside the prison systems, the corporate
world where your clients are that you're having inmates work
on their projects. How has that been received?
Amanda Shepherd (13:16):
Yes. So that was that was a tricky one for
us to tackle in this at the beginning because we
thought how do we lead with this as a social enterprise?
I think um I think that generally there's a lot
of perception that a social enterprise is nice but the
work that they're going to do is not as good
and Kelly and I really wanted to make sure that
(13:38):
that wasn't what we led with. So we built up,
we built up the full service creative agency with highly
qualified experienced staff that can mentor and role model the
inmates as they're learning. And
I think building up that reputation in the first instance
(14:00):
then gave you know large Corporates the confidence and the
belief to move forward with what we were doing. So
it is just, you know, it is just educating our
clients on how we work and and getting their feedback
and input into how they would like to work. Would
(14:21):
they like to work, you know, with the Prison Studio,
they like to work with the young people of the
women and and then just working with them and having
a really nice open relationship with them about how it's
actually working. But at the same time what we've been
really proud of is that
We can honestly say to them, regardless of how you
(14:43):
work with us, whether you work with our social enterprise
or with our training studio, everything that you put into
our social enterprise is being reinvested back into training and
helping people of disadvantage because that's the only way that
we've been able to fund it in the last 12 months.
(15:03):
We've we've actually been really fortunate in that we've successfully
managed to get secure a number of grants thanks to
Phoebe who is an incredible grant writer, one of those
other skills that she had no idea that she could do,
but in the last 12 months she's she's managed to
secure at least five grants for us, which has been
(15:26):
amazing because we realized that even though we had this
this charity registered that we actually weren't even using it
as a charity, we were we were putting all our blood,
sweat and tears into it, you know, from the creative
agents were like what charity?, we can actually apply for a grant,
how about that, you know, But but yeah, it's it's
(15:46):
there's there's so many ways in which our corporate clients
and partners can can contribute to that?
Craig Foster (15:54):
Amanda, thaknk you so much.
Amanda Shepherd (15:54):
Thank you Craig.
Craig Foster (15:59):
That's Amanda Shepherd, co founder and managing director of Green
Fox Studio. And this is Phoebe, one of Green Fox's
success stories
Phoebe. Thanks so much for joining us. Can you just
start by taking us back to your extensive experience in
the creative industries where your interest in the arts begin?
Phoebe (16:19):
I actually used to be a nurse. Um And I
went through a bit of unusual experience where my boss
who I really looked up to um
got diagnosed and died within four days of finding out
she had a really aggressive form of leukemia and that
(16:42):
was pretty difficult for me. But in that time I
was actually um soon after that I was writing the
selection criteria for the woman who would become a new body.
Um And I realized that I probably should be a
writer instead of a nurse. And so I ended up
um signing up to do a master's degree in writing
(17:06):
at U. K. And um that's where I got my
qualifications to become an editor and a writer. Um And
while I was there my professor uh said that it
would be
beneficial to learn graphic design because it's good for publishing.
(17:27):
And so I took myself off to design school as
well and sort of accidentally became a graphic designer
Craig Foster (17:33):
a few years ago you found yourself in prison? You
understand that you can't go into great detail but could
you just give us a sense of that period in
your life and how it changed things?
Phoebe (17:46):
Obviously I hadn't planned to make a huge life changing mistake.
One day I was in the community doing my thing
and working and being a normal person in the next
minute I was in the Brisbane Watch house um wearing
(18:07):
a suicide gown and no underwear and um just separated
from my family. And yeah it was extremely distressing, extremely confronting.
Um
It all just happened really quickly and I actually for
the first month or so it was like being in
a dream almost like I didn't
(18:29):
I was just so distressed and I was so traumatized
and I just couldn't stop crying, I was just crying
all day and I couldn't yeah I actually don't remember
probably the first month of being in there. Um I
they first put you in a secure unit and you
have to um they see sort of what you like
and how you behave and everything before they progress you
(18:52):
to lower security accommodation which is like residential
um I actually met people during that time when I
was insecure
but I um I didn't actually remember meeting them and
so when I went into residential I had to meet
all these people all over again. They came up and
they knew me but I didn't know them. I just
(19:13):
had absolutely no recollection. Um So yeah I don't really
remember very much about the first part, I sort of
look back and think
I probably should have been afraid but um I wasn't
because when when you're in so much grief and distress
that you can barely keep yourself alive, you're not exactly
(19:34):
worried about what's gonna happen to you. So
Craig Foster (19:37):
I'm so sorry to hear about that, thank you for
sharing that with us while you were inside, you started
to have some type of work experience. Is that right?
What type of work were you doing? And did you
know at the time how different work experience was in
women's and men's prisons
Phoebe (19:59):
as I went on and sort of
like became friends with people and started learning things about
how the system worked.
Yeah I it became more obvious um
that there was like quite big differences between um women's
and men's work in prison. Um And we were transferred
(20:24):
to Southern Queensland correctional center in 2018 at the end
of 2018. Um and that was formally a men's prison.
And so um the girls there had to take up
the work that the men were doing previously and so
um the main
the main work that they do there is um
(20:46):
it's in industries so they do woodworking and they do
steal work and that sort of thing. So um yeah
the girls basically started doing some things that they've never
done before. So um and you yeah you'd be surprised
they picked it up and actually I um I had
a job where at one point where
(21:07):
it was also a trusted position and I would clean
through visits and I would just be supervised by one
or for a third at a time. So I got
a chance to sort of have conversations and discover what
things were like.
Um and one of them told me that the amount
of work that the girls were doing, compared to the men,
like that actually doubled the output. So they're producing twice
(21:30):
as much as what the men were almost to the
point that the prison couldn't keep up with the there
wasn't enough work within the prison because the girls were
working too fast.
Craig Foster (21:40):
And in your experience, how valuable how important are these
genuine work experiences or education programs inside Australian prisons and
what do they give to the people?
Phoebe (21:56):
I'm really passionate about education and training. And I would
say it is absolutely critical. It's critical to
somebody not being a criminal and reoffending when they leave prison.
It's critical. Um I met one girl and she's been
(22:17):
in prison lots of times. I never saw her after that.
So I think she's probably been doing quite well then,
at least. I hope so. Um But she said
the only thing she's ever achieved um that she was
proud of, the things that she achieved in prison. So
um for a lot of, a lot of those girls
I think um it sort of gives them an opportunity
(22:40):
that I wouldn't have had otherwise. And obviously I have
mixed feelings about prison and I, you know, obviously don't
like our increasing incarceration rates that that are increasing despite
the fact that crime is actually falling,
there's a lot of issues there, but I think that
prison can be an opportunity to provide opportunities for people
(23:03):
that never would have had it previously. I think that
the more diversity is actually the better if there were
more opportunities, I really feel like it would directly influence
the reoffending rate if there were more things for people
to learn to cater to peoples different preferences and skills
and abilities and everything.
(23:24):
I honestly think it would dramatically impact um how many
people come back
Craig Foster (23:30):
and before you found Green Fox, you went through a
process of applying for employment. Tell us about what that
was like and how broader society deals with the concept
of criminality.
Phoebe (23:46):
Um When I was released, obviously my first priority was
getting work. Um I couldn't go back to uh
The work I was doing previously really, I sort of
knew that I needed to start from scratch. Um so
I thought I'll work for somebody else. And so I
made about over 60 applications through seek to
(24:09):
um existing agencies and I still don't know why all
I heard was radio silence. I feel like it's either
because I worked for myself or that they just, they
got good me and obviously the first thing that came
up was really unflattering and most people would just
Look at that and go I'm not going to touch
that with a 20 ft pole. So um I still
(24:32):
don't really know the answer, but what actually happened was
I got really demoralized and I was very despairing. I
mean I have four university degrees and I couldn't get
a job like that's ridiculous. I ended up googling something
along the lines of employment for former prisoners or employment
for ex offenders or something like that.
(24:53):
And one of Green Fox's partners came up in the
google search and when I went through the website and
had a look at it, it I clicked through and
it connected to Green Fox and I discovered that there
was a creative agency that actually taught graphic design to prisoners.
Um and I had no idea that um the entire
(25:14):
time that I was in prison, they were working out
of a barrel on um
teaching graphic design.
Craig Foster (25:21):
And what was it about Green Fox that appealed to you?
Phoebe (25:24):
I liked their website actually, that was probably one of
the first things that grabbed me, I liked the aesthetic.
Um and it looked, it looked nice and I'm a
graphic designer. Obviously I, you know, that that was probably
the first thing that grabbed me, but probably the second
thing was the tagline that we go by, which is
(25:47):
make time count. So
I had already become quite passionate about that. I became
passionate about education and training before I knew they existed
and then I just, I saw that and I just
got really excited. I just couldn't believe that somebody was
doing it. I thought I thought of it myself, but
clearly I hadn't um it was just like it was
(26:09):
meant to be, it was serendipity. I
yeah, it was a small miracle really.
Craig Foster (26:15):
And so tell us about the work that you've been doing, you've,
you know, I understand that you're involved in an application
for a considerable amount of grants, which has been a
huge help to the organization and too many inmates in
the programs around the place. Um what is it that
you do from day to day?
Phoebe (26:35):
Um I commenced employment with
Green Fox doing design, but it was quite soon after that.
Um I was struggling a little bit at the start
because I've since discovered it's a, it's a thing that
other people experience um with the digital divide. So you
go into prison for an average, the average is around
(26:57):
about two years um and it impacts your digital literacy
and for me as a graphic designer that accounts to
hundreds of updates in the adobe suite
that I now didn't know how to use and so
I've been competent prior and then I came out and
found it really difficult because all my tools were moved
(27:17):
and I didn't know how to do things and obviously
Amanda and kelly have been doing this constantly for decades
and they're just so fast and I just, yeah, I
went through this period of being a bit despairing because
I couldn't keep up and it was actually through that
I said give me some riding
um because that's one thing I can always deliver on
(27:38):
and so um we did that and they soon discovered
there was that I was a good writer and so
um progressively I guess I just picked up more and more.
Um I'm really happy to that, I'm really happy that
my writing is actually translating into um
directly into benefit. Um I'm making us real money, I'm
(28:03):
helping us secure
real money to make these, to make out, you know,
more and more studios everywhere to, its every time I
win one of those is more opportunity for other people
and it just makes me really happy. Um So yeah,
I'm really enjoying that, I'm also um enjoying that. I've
(28:25):
kind of helped to expand the service offering a little
bit and so I've um it was a bit scary
at first, I was writing for some of their,
you know, really important clients and obviously I was nervous,
but then um they really liked what I was doing
and now I'm doing it on a regular basis for
some of these companies and um my little part in
(28:48):
that has has helped them to grow and helped them
to increase their sales and all of that and it's,
I can see that it's actually doing something and it's
really satisfying.
Craig Foster (29:02):
That's Phoebe from Green Fox Studio, Thanks for listening to
Getting it right. If you haven't listened to the previous episodes,
make sure you scroll back through your podcast app and
check them out. There's plenty of inspiring stories about hiring,
buying and working with purpose that you don't want to
miss and to make sure you don't miss the upcoming
(29:22):
episodes hit follow in your podcast app while you're there.
Getting it right, is a Jobsbank podcast produced by Deadset Studios.
Amanda Shepherd always loved art and design. She's been a
professional graphic designer and design teacher for decades now, but
she always felt something was missing.
Amanda's upbringing wasn't perfect. No one's is, but it was
a better life brimming with better opportunities than what's afforded
to many other people. When Amanda realized this, she knew
(00:27):
she wanted to do something about it. But what
I'm Craig Foster and this is Getting it right, a
podcast that dives into the stories of people and businesses
who are hiring, buying and working with purpose.
Amanda Shepherd (00:50):
My name is Amanda Shepherd and I am one of
the co founders of Green Fox Studio and Green Fox
Training Studio.
Craig Foster (00:59):
It's wonderful to have you Amanda and I'm so looking
forward to delving into the incredible work that you're doing.
Can we just perhaps start at the beginning of your
graphic design career. How did it begin?
Amanda Shepherd (01:12):
I guess design was one of those things that when
you're a, when you're a relatively poor student and have
struggled to find, you know, your niche in the world.
Being creative was one of those outlets that I had
as a kid. And
and it also, you know, with, with my childhood and
(01:35):
being an only child, I suppose creativity was just the
one thing that I used to use to um to
fill my time. And as I became a teenager and,
you know, they were fairly turbulent years ahead, creativity became
a bit of an escape for me. And you know,
(01:57):
at the
Craig Foster (01:57):
and without that being a negative thing, I think what
I found was that I could use this, I could
harness this creativity to actually create something really beautiful and
for it to be not only a release, but well
perhaps it could be a career and
Amanda Shepherd (02:15):
and yeah, I think that I really, I think that
in those later teen years I really, really focused on
making something, making something out of out of that and
and so I was quite driven to want to be
a designer. Um and and yeah, look, I have been
(02:36):
a graphic designer now for 25 years, so
I love it, it's an amazing profession, we're so fortunate
to be able to do something that we love as designers.
You now have this extraordinary foundation that you work in
the prison system helping inmates.
Craig Foster (02:56):
So how did you make that leap from, I really
want to use my skills to benefit other people who
are less fortunate or perhaps in this case in some
type of personal trouble across to the actual, you know,
the prison system and this concept of rehabilitation?
Amanda Shepherd (03:15):
At the time that I did make the leap, I
suppose I was working with my now co founder Kelly
Willmott um in media and I was on a maternity
leave contract there and I think, you know, Kelly and
I had hit it off and we formed this this
great bond um
(03:37):
and I kind of expressed how I was feeling about,
loved being a designer, loved being creative, but didn't like,
you know, selling things really, that's that wasn't where I
was at and she was in, in a space that
she was feeling somewhat similar, you know, in that is
(04:01):
there a greater purpose or something? I don't know what
it was. Um
and at the time I had the opportunity to to
start up a pilot program out at one of the
prisons here in Queensland just to test the waters and
see whether digital skills could be taught to prisoners whether
(04:22):
we could do this because, you know, there's there's no
computers in prisons generally as a rule and digital skills
are not taught to prisoners. So I went out there
and I remember sitting there
And interviewing around 50 inmates for the potential positions in
the pilot program and just being so blown away by
(04:46):
their enthusiasm. And it was, we held the interviews like
real job interviews, they had to come with a completed
design brief, they had to show some examples of their
work and talk through what it was that they wanted
to get out of the program. And at the end
of that day we'd selected about nine candidates to start
(05:11):
up the pilot program.
Craig Foster (05:13):
What do you do in these classes? What are you
teaching the inmates?
Amanda Shepherd (05:17):
So we started off by teaching predominantly the Adobe Creative
Cloud suite of programs. So In design, Illustrator and Photoshop that
was that was our mainstay. And that was particularly because
that's where Kelly's and my experience came from. So they
(05:40):
were the programs that we'd used throughout our career, and
of course being a social enterprise, we needed to generate
work so that we could actually pay for our time
to go in and train the prisoners. So we had
to be training them in work that we already knew
(06:01):
how to do because we just didn't have the time
to be able to teach, you know, to reinvent the
wheel per se. Um
and that was predominantly I guess in in corporate designs.
So um we do annual reports, we do logos, um
(06:22):
a lot of, a lot of corporate collateral and brochures
and things like that, which which is how we kind
of kicked off the business. And then once we were
actually in the prison studio we were able to nurture much
larger um interests I suppose because these guys had so
(06:47):
much time to dedicate to learning their programs that they
actually became mentors in their own rights. So what we
found that was that we had around 30 trainees in
the studio
um each morning and then 30 in the afternoon. So
(07:10):
we'd have some full time, so they would work across
the morning and the afternoon shift and then we'd have
trainees that would come in in the morning shift and
a different set of trainees that would come in in
the afternoon shift. So what happened was the full timers,
they started teaching and mentoring the newer participants, which is
how we were actually able to increase our numbers. Um
(07:34):
and then they would start learning different programs. They started
learning more programs way more than we knew. So they
started learning, you know motion graphics 3D Modeling. Um We had,
you know, we had people that had learned to code
from reading books, so they actually never sat at a
(07:56):
computer before and all of a sudden they had this
opportunity to put all of this knowledge into actual practical
skills and they were actually coding apps for us whilst
we were in there. Um you know, we saw some
real incredible talent in a diverse range of creative industries.
(08:18):
So
what Kelly and I started looking at was well how
do we nurture all of these different skill sets because
not everyone's going to go in and become a graphic
designer when they leave, but what skills can they actually
take with them that can transfer across into their life
once they leave prison. So it could be that, you know,
(08:40):
they had really fantastic project management skills or maybe they
had I. T. Skills or you know, perhaps they were
fantastic writers or whatever that may be. So when we
kind of looked at that the vast array of of
men that were working in that studio at the time,
we went this is incredible like this could be, this
(09:03):
is just like a workplace, these skills are so transferable,
we need to do this, You know, we need to
do this elsewhere. We need to help lots of people.
We can do this. There's there's no limits to what
we can do.
Um, so, you can imagine as, as, you know, business owners,
there's one thing, but but also as the charity, um,
(09:26):
we thought, you know, we we felt a real sense
of pride and accomplishment because we could see that what
we were doing was having real immediate impact. And we
were directly working with the people whose lives we were
impacting
and we would hear from their, their families, you know,
they would follow us on facebook and they would, you know,
(09:49):
they comments and it was lovely, you know, it was
really nice to actually see that all of this time
and these sleepless nights were actually paying off.
Craig Foster (10:04):
Tell us about some of those who have moved on
from the program and and who who are continuing with you.
Amanda Shepherd (10:11):
Yeah, look, we have so many great stories Craig I um,
but it is very much about breaking down that institutionalization
and seeing people as the people that they are, you know,
is that they were meant to be rather than their crime.
I think one of the, one of the things that
(10:32):
I didn't realize when I went to work inside, you know,
behind the bars was that um, prisoners are not actually rehabilitated.
There's not, there's not a large focus on rehabilitation. The
focus is largely on removing those people from the community
(10:54):
where they are deemed to be a risk or, you know,
whatever that may be to the community or to themselves
or and once they're incarcerated, they're just,
there's just not a lot of rehabilitation happening there. And
that surprised me because I think, I think I'd always
thought quite naively that, well, you know, obviously when you
(11:18):
go to prison, you spend a lot of time working
on yourself. That's for those people that actually have the
awareness and the insight to be able to do that.
It's not facilitated. Um, and I think that there's so
much that can happen in terms of the participants being
able to work on themselves if they provided the right
(11:44):
means, I guess it's being able to see those things,
seeing seeing achievements, seeing that they are able to do
something that maybe they didn't believe. Um, you know, if
you're always told that you can't do something, you do
start to believe it. But if you're told that, well,
maybe that didn't work. But what about what about that?
(12:05):
What about you give that a try, then you start
to see that. Okay. You know, there are, there's other
ways and
we have, I mean, our statistics would speak for themselves.
So we've trained almost 170 inmates and um, up until,
(12:26):
and I apologize, my statistics aren't, you know, as recent,
but up until September last year, 29 of those inmates
in the previous 12 month period had been released and
only one had re offended. So in terms of what
we're looking at, you know in in recidivism rate, the
(12:49):
average recidivism rate around in Queensland anyways about 47%. You know,
it's it's near 50%. So when you look at our statistics,
we're talking about less than 4%.
Craig Foster (13:02):
What about the world outside the prison systems, the corporate
world where your clients are that you're having inmates work
on their projects. How has that been received?
Amanda Shepherd (13:16):
Yes. So that was that was a tricky one for
us to tackle in this at the beginning because we
thought how do we lead with this as a social enterprise?
I think um I think that generally there's a lot
of perception that a social enterprise is nice but the
work that they're going to do is not as good
and Kelly and I really wanted to make sure that
(13:38):
that wasn't what we led with. So we built up,
we built up the full service creative agency with highly
qualified experienced staff that can mentor and role model the
inmates as they're learning. And
I think building up that reputation in the first instance
(14:00):
then gave you know large Corporates the confidence and the
belief to move forward with what we were doing. So
it is just, you know, it is just educating our
clients on how we work and and getting their feedback
and input into how they would like to work. Would
(14:21):
they like to work, you know, with the Prison Studio,
they like to work with the young people of the
women and and then just working with them and having
a really nice open relationship with them about how it's
actually working. But at the same time what we've been
really proud of is that
We can honestly say to them, regardless of how you
(14:43):
work with us, whether you work with our social enterprise
or with our training studio, everything that you put into
our social enterprise is being reinvested back into training and
helping people of disadvantage because that's the only way that
we've been able to fund it in the last 12 months.
(15:03):
We've we've actually been really fortunate in that we've successfully
managed to get secure a number of grants thanks to
Phoebe who is an incredible grant writer, one of those
other skills that she had no idea that she could do,
but in the last 12 months she's she's managed to
secure at least five grants for us, which has been
(15:26):
amazing because we realized that even though we had this
this charity registered that we actually weren't even using it
as a charity, we were we were putting all our blood,
sweat and tears into it, you know, from the creative
agents were like what charity?, we can actually apply for a grant,
how about that, you know, But but yeah, it's it's
(15:46):
there's there's so many ways in which our corporate clients
and partners can can contribute to that?
Craig Foster (15:54):
Amanda, thaknk you so much.
Amanda Shepherd (15:54):
Thank you Craig.
Craig Foster (15:59):
That's Amanda Shepherd, co founder and managing director of Green
Fox Studio. And this is Phoebe, one of Green Fox's
success stories
Phoebe. Thanks so much for joining us. Can you just
start by taking us back to your extensive experience in
the creative industries where your interest in the arts begin?
Phoebe (16:19):
I actually used to be a nurse. Um And I
went through a bit of unusual experience where my boss
who I really looked up to um
got diagnosed and died within four days of finding out
she had a really aggressive form of leukemia and that
(16:42):
was pretty difficult for me. But in that time I
was actually um soon after that I was writing the
selection criteria for the woman who would become a new body.
Um And I realized that I probably should be a
writer instead of a nurse. And so I ended up
um signing up to do a master's degree in writing
(17:06):
at U. K. And um that's where I got my
qualifications to become an editor and a writer. Um And
while I was there my professor uh said that it
would be
beneficial to learn graphic design because it's good for publishing.
(17:27):
And so I took myself off to design school as
well and sort of accidentally became a graphic designer
Craig Foster (17:33):
a few years ago you found yourself in prison? You
understand that you can't go into great detail but could
you just give us a sense of that period in
your life and how it changed things?
Phoebe (17:46):
Obviously I hadn't planned to make a huge life changing mistake.
One day I was in the community doing my thing
and working and being a normal person in the next
minute I was in the Brisbane Watch house um wearing
(18:07):
a suicide gown and no underwear and um just separated
from my family. And yeah it was extremely distressing, extremely confronting.
Um
It all just happened really quickly and I actually for
the first month or so it was like being in
a dream almost like I didn't
(18:29):
I was just so distressed and I was so traumatized
and I just couldn't stop crying, I was just crying
all day and I couldn't yeah I actually don't remember
probably the first month of being in there. Um I
they first put you in a secure unit and you
have to um they see sort of what you like
and how you behave and everything before they progress you
(18:52):
to lower security accommodation which is like residential
um I actually met people during that time when I
was insecure
but I um I didn't actually remember meeting them and
so when I went into residential I had to meet
all these people all over again. They came up and
they knew me but I didn't know them. I just
(19:13):
had absolutely no recollection. Um So yeah I don't really
remember very much about the first part, I sort of
look back and think
I probably should have been afraid but um I wasn't
because when when you're in so much grief and distress
that you can barely keep yourself alive, you're not exactly
(19:34):
worried about what's gonna happen to you. So
Craig Foster (19:37):
I'm so sorry to hear about that, thank you for
sharing that with us while you were inside, you started
to have some type of work experience. Is that right?
What type of work were you doing? And did you
know at the time how different work experience was in
women's and men's prisons
Phoebe (19:59):
as I went on and sort of
like became friends with people and started learning things about
how the system worked.
Yeah I it became more obvious um
that there was like quite big differences between um women's
and men's work in prison. Um And we were transferred
(20:24):
to Southern Queensland correctional center in 2018 at the end
of 2018. Um and that was formally a men's prison.
And so um the girls there had to take up
the work that the men were doing previously and so
um the main
the main work that they do there is um
(20:46):
it's in industries so they do woodworking and they do
steal work and that sort of thing. So um yeah
the girls basically started doing some things that they've never
done before. So um and you yeah you'd be surprised
they picked it up and actually I um I had
a job where at one point where
(21:07):
it was also a trusted position and I would clean
through visits and I would just be supervised by one
or for a third at a time. So I got
a chance to sort of have conversations and discover what
things were like.
Um and one of them told me that the amount
of work that the girls were doing, compared to the men,
like that actually doubled the output. So they're producing twice
(21:30):
as much as what the men were almost to the
point that the prison couldn't keep up with the there
wasn't enough work within the prison because the girls were
working too fast.
Craig Foster (21:40):
And in your experience, how valuable how important are these
genuine work experiences or education programs inside Australian prisons and
what do they give to the people?
Phoebe (21:56):
I'm really passionate about education and training. And I would
say it is absolutely critical. It's critical to
somebody not being a criminal and reoffending when they leave prison.
It's critical. Um I met one girl and she's been
(22:17):
in prison lots of times. I never saw her after that.
So I think she's probably been doing quite well then,
at least. I hope so. Um But she said
the only thing she's ever achieved um that she was
proud of, the things that she achieved in prison. So
um for a lot of, a lot of those girls
I think um it sort of gives them an opportunity
(22:40):
that I wouldn't have had otherwise. And obviously I have
mixed feelings about prison and I, you know, obviously don't
like our increasing incarceration rates that that are increasing despite
the fact that crime is actually falling,
there's a lot of issues there, but I think that
prison can be an opportunity to provide opportunities for people
(23:03):
that never would have had it previously. I think that
the more diversity is actually the better if there were
more opportunities, I really feel like it would directly influence
the reoffending rate if there were more things for people
to learn to cater to peoples different preferences and skills
and abilities and everything.
(23:24):
I honestly think it would dramatically impact um how many
people come back
Craig Foster (23:30):
and before you found Green Fox, you went through a
process of applying for employment. Tell us about what that
was like and how broader society deals with the concept
of criminality.
Phoebe (23:46):
Um When I was released, obviously my first priority was
getting work. Um I couldn't go back to uh
The work I was doing previously really, I sort of
knew that I needed to start from scratch. Um so
I thought I'll work for somebody else. And so I
made about over 60 applications through seek to
(24:09):
um existing agencies and I still don't know why all
I heard was radio silence. I feel like it's either
because I worked for myself or that they just, they
got good me and obviously the first thing that came
up was really unflattering and most people would just
Look at that and go I'm not going to touch
that with a 20 ft pole. So um I still
(24:32):
don't really know the answer, but what actually happened was
I got really demoralized and I was very despairing. I
mean I have four university degrees and I couldn't get
a job like that's ridiculous. I ended up googling something
along the lines of employment for former prisoners or employment
for ex offenders or something like that.
(24:53):
And one of Green Fox's partners came up in the
google search and when I went through the website and
had a look at it, it I clicked through and
it connected to Green Fox and I discovered that there
was a creative agency that actually taught graphic design to prisoners.
Um and I had no idea that um the entire
(25:14):
time that I was in prison, they were working out
of a barrel on um
teaching graphic design.
Craig Foster (25:21):
And what was it about Green Fox that appealed to you?
Phoebe (25:24):
I liked their website actually, that was probably one of
the first things that grabbed me, I liked the aesthetic.
Um and it looked, it looked nice and I'm a
graphic designer. Obviously I, you know, that that was probably
the first thing that grabbed me, but probably the second
thing was the tagline that we go by, which is
(25:47):
make time count. So
I had already become quite passionate about that. I became
passionate about education and training before I knew they existed
and then I just, I saw that and I just
got really excited. I just couldn't believe that somebody was
doing it. I thought I thought of it myself, but
clearly I hadn't um it was just like it was
(26:09):
meant to be, it was serendipity. I
yeah, it was a small miracle really.
Craig Foster (26:15):
And so tell us about the work that you've been doing, you've,
you know, I understand that you're involved in an application
for a considerable amount of grants, which has been a
huge help to the organization and too many inmates in
the programs around the place. Um what is it that
you do from day to day?
Phoebe (26:35):
Um I commenced employment with
Green Fox doing design, but it was quite soon after that.
Um I was struggling a little bit at the start
because I've since discovered it's a, it's a thing that
other people experience um with the digital divide. So you
go into prison for an average, the average is around
(26:57):
about two years um and it impacts your digital literacy
and for me as a graphic designer that accounts to
hundreds of updates in the adobe suite
that I now didn't know how to use and so
I've been competent prior and then I came out and
found it really difficult because all my tools were moved
(27:17):
and I didn't know how to do things and obviously
Amanda and kelly have been doing this constantly for decades
and they're just so fast and I just, yeah, I
went through this period of being a bit despairing because
I couldn't keep up and it was actually through that
I said give me some riding
um because that's one thing I can always deliver on
(27:38):
and so um we did that and they soon discovered
there was that I was a good writer and so
um progressively I guess I just picked up more and more.
Um I'm really happy to that, I'm really happy that
my writing is actually translating into um
directly into benefit. Um I'm making us real money, I'm
(28:03):
helping us secure
real money to make these, to make out, you know,
more and more studios everywhere to, its every time I
win one of those is more opportunity for other people
and it just makes me really happy. Um So yeah,
I'm really enjoying that, I'm also um enjoying that. I've
(28:25):
kind of helped to expand the service offering a little
bit and so I've um it was a bit scary
at first, I was writing for some of their,
you know, really important clients and obviously I was nervous,
but then um they really liked what I was doing
and now I'm doing it on a regular basis for
some of these companies and um my little part in
(28:48):
that has has helped them to grow and helped them
to increase their sales and all of that and it's,
I can see that it's actually doing something and it's
really satisfying.
Craig Foster (29:02):
That's Phoebe from Green Fox Studio, Thanks for listening to
Getting it right. If you haven't listened to the previous episodes,
make sure you scroll back through your podcast app and
check them out. There's plenty of inspiring stories about hiring,
buying and working with purpose that you don't want to
miss and to make sure you don't miss the upcoming
(29:22):
episodes hit follow in your podcast app while you're there.
Getting it right, is a Jobsbank podcast produced by Deadset Studios.
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