Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery has launched a new partnership to deliver a UK–Norway exchange programme connecting artists, curators and prison-based art initiatives.

Joining with Agder Kunstakademi, an art school that ran in Agder Prison between 2021 – 2023, the programme explores the role of art school pedagogy within prison systems through exhibitions, residencies, workshops and public events.

The initiative is supported by KORO – Public Art Norway, the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust and the Royal Norwegian Embassy in London.

At Ikon Gallery, TV Pain, an installation by Agder Kunstakademi alumnus Zubair, reimagines damaged prison televisions as sculptural forms, transforming objects of frustration into spaces for creative expression. The exhibition is curated by Nick London (Inside Time), connected to Ikon’s long-running Art at HMP Grendon programme.

The opening coincides with the symposium Art, Prisons and Health, on Wed 25 Jun at Birmingham Library, bringing together UK and Norwegian perspectives on criminal justice, care and rehabilitation.

The exchange continues through artist residencies in both countries. Dag Erik Elgin will lead a collaborative workshop at HMP Grendon in August, while James Lomax will undertake a residency at Agder Prison in September, reactivating its ceramics studio and developing research into creative labour in carceral spaces.

Photographer Edmund Clark will contribute through visiting Agder Prison, documenting and researching, drawing on his longstanding exploration of state power and systems of control.

Over six months, participants will engage in ongoing dialogue around prison art education, culminating in a roundtable at the Royal Norwegian Embassy in London in November 2026.

You can find out more about the programme here.