What I Learned About Life from Teaching in a Prison
Jennie Lichfield SpeakerNet Sponsor
- Regions:
- England, Kent, East Sussex, Surrey, Essex
- Notice Period:
- Emergency (maybe less than one week's notice)
- Type:
- Professional
- Fee:
- Paid
- Category:
- Humanities
- Updated:
- 8th September 2026
- Tagged:
- True Stories | Behind The Scenes | Human Interest | Humour
What can a place built around confinement teach us about how to live more freely?
Drawing on her experiences inside English prisons as a Buddhist chaplain, Jennie explores some of the unexpected lessons she learned about resilience, compassion, inner strength and our tendency to judge both ourselves and other people.
Through stories that are sometimes moving, sometimes surprising and often very funny, the talk looks beyond the prison walls to the things we all have in common. How do we respond when life doesn’t go as planned? Where does real strength come from? Can compassion exist alongside accountability? And how much of our own freedom depends upon the way we choose to see the world?
What I Learned About Life from Teaching in a Prison is ultimately not a talk about prison. It is a talk about being human, and the wisdom that can sometimes be found in the most unlikely places.
Views: 56 | Enquiries: 0About Jennie Lichfield
Jennie Lichfield is an experienced speaker, teacher and multi-award-winning Lady Toastmaster with a rather unusual CV.
For several years she worked inside English prisons, initially teaching wellbeing and personal development before going on to work in prison chaplaincy. It gave her a fascinating glimpse into a world most of us never see and taught her some unexpected lessons about people, judgement, resilience and what it really means to be free.
Over the years Jennie has worn many hats: therapist, wellbeing teacher, business owner, celebrant and public speaker. The common thread has always been people. She has spent much of her working life teaching, supporting and standing alongside them, sometimes at the happiest moments of their lives and sometimes at the hardest.
Her talks draw on real-life experience and are warm, thought-provoking and frequently funny. She is particularly interested in the ordinary human stories behind extraordinary environments and what they can teach us about our own lives.
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