Our Magazine
The Within and Beyond the Stone Walls Magazine is a bi-annual publication, produced by the Beyond the Stone Walls Advisory Collective.
The magazine is crafted primarily for and by people who are or have been incarcerated and includes works from across six Victorian prison-based Think Tanks. Woven throughout are personal stories, poems, advice, recipes, paintings, illustrations and more, from within and beyond the prison walls.
Our magazine provides the vehicle through which people incarcerated across Victoria, BSWAC and Think Tank members, can find connection and shared experience in one another, beyond the walls that separate us.
Our Magazine pays homage to its roots in the work of prison-based Think Tanks and honours the path our organisation has tread.
Origins: prison-based newsletters
Since 2016, prison-based Think Tanks have been individually developing newsletters. Every year, these newsletters are gifted to the newest Inside Out Prison Exchange Program cohort on their graduation.
In 2023, nearly a decade from the newsletters first iteration, now with Think Tanks based across six different prison locations, BSWAC designed the first ‘Prison and Community Based Think Tank’ Newsletter.
For the first time, this allowed our community to see the huge network they were a part of – across other prisons and beyond.
For the first time, we were also able to share this publication with the wider community.
While prison-based Think Tanks continue to produce their own newsletters, the growth our integrated publication has seen, was the catalyst for us deciding to formally name it the Within and Beyond the Stone Walls Magazine.