Credits
Digital Exhibition Designers
Alyssa Baginski
Nora Krinitsky
Prison Creative Arts Project Curators
Janie Paul, Senior Curator and Exhibition Co-Founder
Alyssa Baginski
Jessy Butts
Jeff Clark
Caleb Foerg
Graham Hamilton
Charlie Michaels
Bryan Picken
Kimiko Uyeda
Martín Vargas
Prison Creative Arts Project Staff and Faculty
Nora Krinitsky, Interim Director
Vanessa Mayesky, Associate Director
Graham Hamilton, Arts Programming Coordinator
Mary Heinen McPherson, Program Coordinator
Fernanda Pires, Public Relations/Storyteller
Ashley Lucas, PCAP Faculty
Prison Creative Arts Project Founder
Buzz Alexander founded the Prison Creative Arts Project in 1990 and from that point on, he dedicated his life to working with incarcerated people. For many years, he was the facilitator and a member of the Sisters Within Theatre Troupe at Michigan women’s prisons and the facilitator of the Poets’ Corner at men’s prisons in Jackson. In 1996 he and his partner, Janie Paul, co-founded the Annual Exhibition of Art by Michigan Prisoners. Powerfully influenced by educators Paolo Freire and Myles Horton, Buzz developed his own way of guiding students in their own personal relationships to inequality, injustice and mass incarceration. His most far-reaching contribution was the creation of a unique liberatory teaching method that educated thousands of students who facilitated theater, writing, and art workshops in prisons and juvenile facilities. Creating a model that forged partnerships between college students and incarcerated people, he influenced hundreds of alumni who have become social workers, teachers, human rights workers, defense attorneys and activists working to end mass incarceration. The incredible story is chronicled in his book, Is William Martinez Not Our Brother? (2010).