The perfume that unlocks a better place for men behind bars

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

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.”