The Holloway Prison beds

INMATES’ beds that were rescued from the former Holloway Prison for women are being stored to become an art trail to preserve the history of the now-demolished building.

Campaigner and Holloway resident Niki Gibbs, from the Beauty Out of Ashes group, is raising £1,200 to store 30 of the beds that were salvaged after the prison was closed in 2016 before being turned into Peabody flats. She hopes to turn them into a collaborative art project, involving former inmates of the prison.

Ms Gibbs said: “We had really brilliant access when Peabody first took over the site. I photographed all the graffiti in all the cells.

“Nothing was left in the prison other than the beds. It was cleared out so I wanted to rescue all the beds, but they weren’t prepared to unbolt all of them so they unbolted 30 for me. They gave 50 to a theatre company.

“These are precious items that could tell the story of the prison in a way that words can’t. It can provoke conversations; it can get people thinking. So we saved them.”

Niki Gibbs during her Brighton ride

She added that she wanted the prison to be remembered as a “legacy heritage space” rather than a brownfield site used for development.

The beds are currently being kept in a small storage container in Broxbourne. Ms Gibbs added “they’re having a holiday by the canal”. She’s fundraising to keep them in storage for two years to give herself time to organise the logistics of the heritage project.

Her vision is to involve incarcerated women, artists and other organisations to repurpose the beds and then put them along an art trail, in public places or foyers of buildings.

“The subject matter is around criminal justice, but we shouldn’t close it down to people who haven’t been involved in that system. The idea is to raise awareness of women’s issues and in my view that could be anything because anybody can end up in prison,” she said.

To kickstart the fundraising campaign, Ms Gibbs cycled from London to Brighton and back in September. She said the ride to the coast was “long” but she “absolutely loved it”.

Beauty out of Ashes aims to create a home for women’s services in London as a legacy of HMP Holloway and the women who were imprisoned there.

It is halfway to meeting its fundraising target. If you want to donate, visit https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/bikeforthebeds