‘Music was a lifeline’: the record label helping former offenders thrive after prison

‘The hope for our artists is that they get snapped up by bigger fish’ … Ryan Kershaw, a Red Tangent Records signee. Photograph: Gareth Hamer

“There is such a pool of raw talent in prisons,” says David Jones, CEO of Changing Tunes and co-founder of Red Tangent Records. “There are [inmates] who potentially have a real chance of making it in the music industry so we thought we should do something for them.”

Red Tangent was founded in 2021 by the team behind Changing Tunes, a charity that uses music to support UK prisoners and ex-prisoners in leading lives free from crime. “Red Tangent is a label for people with lived experiences of prison run by people with lived experiences of prison,” Jones says. “That’s in our DNA.”