hpmgroup are celebrating after managing a prestigious event at Durham Cathedral on Friday 11 June 2010.

The event, in partnership with the County Durham Drug & Alcohol Action Team, North East Offender Health, NEPACS, the NHS and Beacon North East, was organised and executed by hpmgroup's very own marketing team.

Baroness Corston, the author of the highly influential 2006 Corston Report on the imprisonment of women, was the guest speaker for the evening, detailing her experience of working with female offenders and how certain life factors have affected their ability to manage their actions.

The event also featured a photographic exhibition by ex lawyer, Adrian Clarke. The Road to Low Newton details the lives of 40 women who have served time in Low Newton prison. The exhibition, which is also now a published book, can be visited at Durham Cathedral's Gallilee Chapel until Sunday 27th June.

Clarke’s book and exhibition is the result of a project commissioned by Julie Dhuny of NHS County Durham and Darlington North East Offender Health Service and organised by Mandy English at the County Durham Drug and Alcohol Action team. The project was jointly funded by the North East Offender Health Service and Beacon North East.

Julie Dhuny said: “For myself as the Regional Commissioner this project has provided an invaluable insight into the health and social needs of women who go to prison. It will inform our future work as Commissioners and will influence the work of others including Public Health and Primary Care within the National Health Service. It will help us to address the concerns of the most vulnerable in our society. All in a format which is as much a work of art as of user consultation.”

Adrian Clarke added: “This project has allowed me to continue my engagement with the North East which began in 2004 with my series photographing and interviewing the carers of drug users. I have found it shocking that these women, most of whom experienced trauma as young children and in their adult relationships have ended up being punished for their inability to cope. We should not blame the prison except where individuals there have shown cruelty or unkindness but a culture in which we prefer to ignore, label, isolate and lock away rather than protecting, listening and seeking to understand. Low Newton has to deal with a situation in which everything has already gone wrong.”

This month’s New York based Paris Review, in which a selection of Clarke’s photographs and interviews were published, said: “Clarke’s portraits are stark, candid; his subjects’ testimonies only more so. In their conversations with him, the former inmates were explicit, searching, forthcoming and forthright”