We are delighted to announce that the award-winning HMPPS Insights Festival is back and will take place 17th –28th November 2025!
The Insights Festival is a free peer led programme, for you, by you. It brings together prison, probation, youth services, voluntary sector and wider justice services to learn from insight, data and evidence, share good practice, connect people across the system and celebrate the great work we do. Our inspiring, innovative and exclusive hosts played a huge part in the success of Insights23, and you could help us to make Insights25 the best yet!
Applications to host events as part of the Festival programme are now open and close on 11th July.
In response to your feedback, and to align with the HMPPS focus on people and performance, Insights25 events will be smaller and more tightly focussed on the strategic aim of empowering, enabling and looking after our people who work across the criminal justice sector and celebrating their important work.
We are looking for events that share evidence, learning and good practice on:
- Creating a positive culture that enables staff to thrive
- Effective leadership/management approaches that empower staff to perform well
- Improving staff wellbeing
- Promoting professional standards and tackling unacceptable behaviour
- Increasing staff retention or enhancing career development
- Improving staff diversity and inclusion
- Rewarding and recognising staff
If you work in the criminal justice sector and are interested in sharing learning to help empower, enable and support staff, providing unique insight into different parts of the system, we’d love to hear from you.
We’re sorry that this year, we won’t be able to include events for our main programme outside these criteria.
However, we are keen to continue to offer a range of exciting VIP opportunities to shadow colleagues, go behind the scenes and gain access to exclusive locations across the justice system. These opportunities are open to one person or a small group of staff and are allocated through a ballot – they do not need to meet the criteria for the theme. If you can offer access to unique experiences for staff, including mentoring and coaching opportunities, please get in touch via the link below.
Have you got a positive story to share from attending a previous Insights Festival event? If so, we would love to hear from you. Email us at insights@justice.gov.uk to share your experiences.
The Insights Festival is an award-winning programme of events which aims to showcase the breadth of innovative work taking place across prison, probation, youth services, voluntary sector and wider justice services.
While we await the next festival, we will continue to deliver a programme of online panel events throughout 2024 which aim to bring:
- evidence, data and insight to life, and support staff to apply it to decision making and practice
- leading academics, policy, operational staff, partners and people with lived experience together to discuss key findings from research, how this can be applied on the frontline, and share good practice
If you have an idea for a panel event, please contact us.
Insights blog archive
Reflections from Insights Festival events, recordings and guest blogs from authors across MoJ and the wider Criminal Justice System.
Insights event recordings
Find out more about our online event recordings and watch past festival events at our YouTube channel.