He got me at the beginning, when the music started and he said “This is dedicated to my Mum...for all the times I made her cry...I didn’t mean to...”

Now I don’t think I cry easily but my eyes definitely felt damp. My throat felt constricted. As I listened to the song I wanted to blub and spent most of the song trying to contain my emotion.

This clean-cut, good-looking young man was singing a song about how his biggest regret was making his mum cry ‘Over and Over’ and how he wanted to do something to make her really proud. It was all the more poignant because of where he was singing it.

I was sitting in the Grade II listed chapel at HMP Wormwood Scrubs where I’d been invited to a short concert by The Irene Taylor Trust ‘Music in Prisons’. The charity had run a week-long project at the prison for inmates on collaborating to write songs, culminating in this performance. The prisoners had chosen their own themes for the songs, written the lyrics and worked out the tune. They called themselves The Exquisite Poets.

‘Over and Over’ was a great song that touched the heart with verses that rapped along at speed, with some angry lyrics such as “I’m never coming back to this place ever again” alongside yearning ones like “I just want to see my mum smile before she goes”.

As he performed the song, on the altar of the old church within the Scrubs, a shaft of sunlight came through the stained glass and illuminated the Madonna and Child painting behind him.

Afterwards I spoke to Sara Lee, Artistic Director of Music in Prisons, who told me that it was a stark reminder that we are all the same. “Hearing someone sing a song to his mum in that situation may well remind people that we all tread a thin line and that just because you are in prison doesn’t mean you don’t feel sadness and remorse and that you don’t love your mum. It’s humanising and his delivery and the content was raw and honest.” She explained that Jermaine, who wrote and performed that song, was one of the most talented lyricists they had ever worked with.

During the five songs they performed, which ranged from soft rock to rap, the universal themes of loss, sorrow and hope came through, without dwelling on the reasons they were inside.

These week-long projects have been run up and down the country since 1995. They can be tough for everyone taking part. Music in Prisons asks a lot of the group. Sara says that at the beginning they come in and sit down and looked horrified, excited or bemused. They have to learn instruments, write and learn songs, be prepared to trust others and have the perseverance to keep at it and perform it at the end of the week. They build their self-esteem and self-confidence throughout the week without them even realising it is going on.

For Sara herself, this week at Wormwood Scrubs has been a home-coming. She started her career here in the education department where she worked for 11 years before leaving to set up Music in Prisons. She’s a professional musician and an amazing woman who firmly believes that this kind of project is a great stepping stone for change. “You can show people that their lives don’t have to be predetermined, you can change things if you wish.”

For the prisoners who’ve just taken part in the Wormwood Scrubs week, you can see it in their eyes that they are enjoying the applause and the question and answer session that comes after the performance. But Sara says that often the inmates get choked up at the end and have barely looked people in the face as they don’t want to let anybody see them with tears in their eyes. They’ve had a week’s release “out of the groundhog day which is daily life in prison, to do something which can be incredibly beautiful and rewarding. To have an audience saying well done, you’ve done a good job, can be fulfilling but difficult for them.”

It’s not about having a nice time. Sara is insistent that the projects should not be seen as a treat for the prisoners. “It’s about a million and one things, the most important being furnishing people with confidence, self-esteem and a new set of choices, options for the future. I’m not saying any of them will go on and become great musicians but what they’ve learnt is something that’s going to stay with them for a very long time. And it might give them the confidence to go and apply for their first job. It may give them the confidence to stand back in a tricky situation and say Ok there’s going to be another way round this and what is that way, rather than charging through everything. You never know. But you do know it makes a difference.”

I was hugely impressed with what they managed to achieve in such a short time with the volunteer inmates and by the emotions that were shared in the songs and way they were performed. I came away from the concert feeling that even if music takes them from their daily grind and elevates them to a different plane every now and again andmake them think, that’s something. Music pleases the soul; whether it can be transformative is up to them.