In jails across northern England, scents are being used to unlock memories – and possibilities. The Perfume Stories project uses fragrance to spark reflection, creativity and glimpses of hope behind bars
Violin rosin. A football changing room. Rosewater masking a shipment of ketamine. All recollections triggered not by sight or sound, but by the sense of smell. The third example hints at who is poking around in the memory box, and where.
“It starts with a very simple premise,” says illustrator Michael O’Shaughnessy. “They smell a perfume, and I ask what it reminds them of. It can stop them in their tracks. Sometimes it’s like a light going on.”
O’Shaughnessy’s workshop participants are all serving time in prisons across the north of England. His collection of perfumes, a combination of classic French fragrances and bespoke concoctions blended by a collaborating perfumier, can offer a pointer to redemption, or even a brief escape: a moment of freedom sparked by memory.
The roots of O’Shaughnessy’s Perfume Stories project lie in his illustration classes at Liverpool John Moores University, where he used smells to evoke childhood recollections, helping students tease out ideas for art projects.
“It’s a multisensory approach to developing storytelling,” he explains. “Clever kids can always hit the ground running with projects, but smell is a great leveller and I found it was pretty good at reaching the students who struggled.”
O’Shaughnessy took his idea on the road with an installation at Tate Liverpool, capturing audio recordings of people’s responses to various scents. It was here that representatives of a prison education provider, Novus, asked the question: would he consider taking his idea behind bars?
It can stop them in their tracks. Sometimes it’s like a light going on
“I jumped at the chance,” says O’Shaughnessy, who uses scents including timeless big hitters like Guerlain’s Shalimar and Chanel’s Cuir de Russie. “I tried it with a small group at HMP Liverpool. I was warned that if they don’t like something, they’ll just get up and leave – but it worked.”
He often begins his sessions with the opening line from Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera: “It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.”
The passage captures the essence of what he’s inviting participants to do: step into a kind of sensory time machine, powered by perfume. “Some scents take them outside, away from the internal walls of their confined spaces to another world,” he explains. “In nearly all cases, to a better place. A place and a time when they were happy.”
On the scent of change: Michael O’Shaughnessy photographed at John Moores University
But more than just a nostalgic flight of fancy, the workshops offer a creative gateway into adult learning through the lens of scent, story and memory. They challenge conventions about the way we learn while championing alternative ways of thinking. The men are encouraged to write down their experiences and read them aloud. For some, the confidence boost has catalysed interest in other academic programmes.
“These are men who have often had mixed experiences with education, they’re often cagey to begin with, and just getting them to sit down for a few hours is a big deal,” O’Shaughnessy explains. “But suddenly they’re talking among themselves about memories from when they were 12 years old. They’re empowered, and they come up with some great stories.”
Memories are almost always positive, O’Shaughnessy says, men recalling better versions of themselves. They’re often matriarchal, centred around a mother or grandmother.
Some scents take them outside, away from the internal walls of their confined spaces to another world
One guy recalled messing around with his nan’s beauty creams and hair oils. Another remembered buying ‘cherry lips’ sweets from the corner shop. The workshops have sparked flashbacks of dog walks in botanical gardens, new school shoes and Christmas shopping in Boots.
Feedback from participants has been similarly striking. Words like “mental escapism”, “positive experience” and “magic” crop up. And in true Scouse style: “It was boss.”
O’Shaughnessy volunteers his time, with some basic expenses covered by Novus. Perfumes – often expensive luxury brands – have largely been begged and bought secondhand. He takes tiny samples of each into workshops on strips of blotting paper.
One guy recalled messing around with his nan’s beauty creams and hair oils. Another remembered buying ‘cherry lips’ sweets from the corner shop
At times, the current difficulties facing the UK prison service have made for challenging teaching conditions. There’s noise and disruption. Prisoners are moved at short notice. But O’Shaughnessy says prison staff have been supportive of his unusual approach, even sitting in on the sessions to get a sense of how they work.
O’Shaughnessy has since taken his workshops to other prisons in the north-west. He’s teamed up with the Lancashire-based perfume manufacturer Caravansons to produce a kit of bespoke aromas, and trained prison staff in the north-east to run the workshops themselves. In some settings, the idea has evolved beyond memory and creative work, inspiring practical skills training in areas such as cookery, barbering and business studies.
For now, he’s back to training prison educators at HMP Holme House in Stockton-on-Tees, but he thinks the concept could have legs in other contexts, too. In work with Alzheimer’s patients, for example, and in drug rehabilitation programmes. “I’m open-minded,” O’Shaughnessy says. “I have the blueprint: someone else could use the project.”
Tools of change: perfumes have been donated or bought secondhand, with O’Shaughnessy taking tiny samples of each into prison workshops on blotting paper
Perfume Stories can’t change the facts of a prison sentence, nor turn back the clock on past wrongdoings, but in a setting where closed doors define the day-to-day, they can unlock experiences that are joyful, reflective or even healing.
“The more I can imagine my future – the greater the possibility,” one prisoner wrote. “What does my future smell like? Does the world have a place for me? The past was how I remembered it. How I experienced it. It taught me how to feel. I experience now through the mirror of the past. How I respond to the past affects my future.”
“It may not quite be a line from Gabriel García Márquez,” says O’Shaughnessy. “But quite possibly, it could be the start of something else – change, rehabilitation and redemption.”
Photography: Jack Roe
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