Speakers
Parallel Workshops
What does it take to break the cycle of reoffending? This session answers that question through one of the most compelling stories in contemporary corrections: the journey of Tom Magill — former felon, filmmaker, and 20-year peer mentor — and the prisoners whose lives changed when they made a film together.
The session opens with Tom's personal story: sentenced at 19 for a violent felony, he entered prison with no qualifications and a list of Adverse Childhood Experiences that reads like a textbook of root causes. Inside, he discovered Shakespeare - not as literature, but as a survival guide for reading duplicity, understanding his own destructive patterns, and deciding to change. That decision led to a BA in Drama, a Fringe First at Edinburgh, and ultimately to co-founding ESC Films in Belfast.
Tom Magill is a former felon turned filmmaker who has spent over 20 years as a peer mentor to prisoners. Sentenced at 19 for a violent felony, Tom entered prison with no qualifications, no prospects, and a handful of Adverse Childhood Experiences. Inside, an unlikely mentor — an IRA hunger striker — sent him to the prison library, where he discovered first Steinbeck, then Shakespeare. That encounter changed the course of his life.
After release, Tom studied drama at Birmingham University, won a Fringe First at Edinburgh, and co-founded ESC Films in Belfast in 1999. In 2006/7, working in partnership with Maghaberry high-security prison — then dubbed the most dangerous prison in the UK — he directed Mickey B, the world's first feature film adaptation of Macbeth shot inside a prison with prisoners as its cast. The film went on to screen at 34 universities across 12 countries, win international awards, and feature in taught courses at institutions including the Open University, Emory, Atlanta USA and the University of Guelph, Canada. Tom has since lectured to prison officers in South Korea, collaborated with academics across Europe and North America, and spent two decades using Shakespeare as a tool for peer mentoring, trauma processing and rehabilitation. His story “From Felon to Filmmaker” is published in Shakespeare, Education and Pedagogy (London: Routledge, 2023).