Paul was given the first ever permissions by the Home Office to run workshops inside to make a feature film with prisoners and professional actors, supported by a Steering Committee, established by Paul, which included former Home Secretary, Merlyn Rees, barrister and playwright John Mortimer, and Conservative MP for Devon Tony Speller.
Additional input was provided by a team of consultants - Dr Stephen Shaw of the Prison Reform Trust, Rex Bloomstein, documentarian, Cicely Berry of the Royal Shakespeare Company and Gill Wright, metaphysician and therapist.
The first workshops were mostly in acting and studying scripts and film but progressed into writing workshops and wider arts like calligraphy.
This led to Paul writing the script Stone Hotel with 12 inmates, Nonce with Michael 'Sam' Sambridge, and the early versions of the script that would become StringCaesar, based on his earlier play Julius Caesar - Queen of Bithynia. This in turn secured the
financial backing of The British Film Institute
Despite the support of the film community and such luminaries as David Attenborough and David Puttnam, as well as many within the Prisons Service and the Dartmoor Governor, the political climate in Britain in the late '80s made it increasingly difficult to work on these kinds of rehabilitating creative projects.
Then at Pollsmoor Prison in South Africa where Nelson Mandela was held for a time during the apartheid era.
In the new Millenia the work was also allowed to resume at HMP Cardiff, in Wales with the support of John May, former Governor of Dartmoor.
NESTA, under the chairmanship of Lord Puttnam, funded workshops prior to filming in Cardiff prison.
Ultimately the Caesar Project was realised in the multi-award winning film Jail Caesar starring Derek Jacobi and John Kani.
In addition to winning GOLD for best Feature at the Asia Pacific International Filmmaker Awards, Jail Caesar won Merit Awards for Cinematography, Directing, Acting, Editing and Story.