Synopsis:

Prison is a different experience for women, who are more likely to suffer mental health difficulties and to self-harm than men. Nearly half have children under 16 and far more women prisoners are foreign, many of them drug mules. In the past ten years, the female prison population in the UK has risen by 173%. Songbirds is an intimate portrait of life in a female prison, told through the stories and voices of its inmates. The programme features women doing time at Downview prison in Surrey for offences including drug smuggling and armed robbery. They find an outlet for their feelings through song, collaborating with director Brian Hill, poet Simon Armitage and composer Simon Boswell, who transform their stories into a musical and facilitate each prisoner to find a unique musical voice. The result raises questions not only about sentencing, but about the effectiveness of prison itself - this documentary from the BAFTA-winning team that produced Feltham Sings paints an altogether different and far more heartwarming picture then the usual TV portrayals of prisons as cold, heartless and depressing places.