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). 

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