Adamu Chan
Adamu Chan is a filmmaker, writer, and community organizer from the Bay Area who was incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison during one of the largest COVID-19 outbreaks in the country. He produced numerous short films while incarcerated, using his vantage point and experience as an incarcerated person as a lens to focus the viewer’s gaze on issues related to social justice. In 2021, he was a recipient of the Docs in Action Film Fund through Working Films, and was tapped to produce and direct his film, What These Walls Won’t Hold. Chan is currently working on the docu-series Bridge Builders, partnering with ITVS. He is also a 2022 Stanford University Center for the Comparative Studies of Race and Ethnicity Mellon Arts Fellow. Chan draws inspiration and energy from the voices of those directly impacted, and seeks to empower them to reshape the narratives that have been created about them through film.
Jaiquan Fayson
Jaiquan Fayson is a visual artist and arts educator born and raised in New York, whose oil paintings and sketch portraits attempt to establish an empathetic connection. While incarcerated and in solitary confinement as a young adult, Fayson used his ability to draw as a means of self-directed therapy and a tool for introspection. Fayson earned the Silas H Rhodes Scholarship for artistic and academic achievement before completing his BFA (2015) in Illustration at the School of Visual Arts. With a desire to inspire the next generation of artists, Fayson is currently employed as an art educator in the NYC Public Schools system while in the final semester of his Master’s in Art Education.
Most recently, Fayson participated in HBO’s The O.G. Experience exhibition; was featured in Drawing Freedom, a short documentary about art as a means of therapy, produced by Motto Pictures for the Healthy US Collaborative; and was featured as a subject in author Craig Taylor’s 2022 book New Yorkers: A City and Its People in Our Time. Fayson continues to explore art as a means of learning, expression and communication.
Michael Fischer
Michael Fischer is a humanities instructor in the Odyssey Project, a free college credit program for income-eligible adults. He is a Luminarts Cultural Foundation fellow, Illinois Humanities Envisioning Justice commissioned humanist, and finalist for the PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship and Education Trust Justice Fellows Policy Program. His nonfiction, which has been nominated multiple times for a Pushcart Prize and cited as notable in Best American Essays, has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, The Sun, Lit Hub, Guernica, Orion, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.
A Moth StorySLAM winner, Fischer tells stories in Moth Mainstage shows across the country and has been featured on the Outside Magazine Podcast, Modern Love: The Podcast, The Moth Radio Hour, and elsewhere. His work has been supported by the Illinois Arts Council, Ragdale Foundation, Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Aspen Institute, and Esalen Institute, among others. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nevada, Reno and an MA in Humanities from the University of Chicago.
Beverly Price
Beverly Price is a native of Washington, DC, photographer and creative activist. Price uses her photography to encourage community engagement and give voice to Black communities and youth. Her photography is grounded in the tradition of photographic realism and explores critical compassion. She is inspired by photographers like Gordon Parks, Helen Levitt, Ming Smith, Berenice Abbott, Wendy Ewald, and many more. She regularly works with communities throughout historic Washington, DC, including Barry Farm and Congress Heights. Price is a recipient of the Smithsonian James E. Webb Scholarship and the Leslie King Hammond Graduate Fellowship. She also received the 2020 AIGA Design World Studio Scholarship. Currently, Price is an Artist-In-Residence at The Nicholson Project in Washington, DC.
Her work has been exhibited and featured at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Anacostia Art Center, Maryland Institute College of Art, American University, and Virginia Commonwealth University, among others. Price holds an MFA in Photographic & Electronic Media from the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Gary Harrell
Gary Harrell is an artist, entrepreneur, craftsman, and a harmonica blues musician. He was born in Spring Hill, Louisiana, and was raised in Orange County, California. He now resides in Sacramento, California with his wife. Harrell began his practice in 1985 through the Arts in Corrections program at San Quentin Prison. Beginning with woodwork and molding glass and plastic, he later expanded into new media such as block prints and advanced techniques using pointillism. Harrell’s work has been included in several exhibitions, including Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, originating at MoMA PS1 and touring at throughout the country; and Meet Us Quickly: Painting for Justice from Prison, at the Museum of the African Diaspora. His work has been shown at venues including the University of Derby, England; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Art in Action Gallery, Flagstaff; Cooper Hewitt Museum, Smithsonian, New York; and Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, and has been featured in The Washington Post, among other publications.
Jeremy Lee MacKenzie
Jeremy Lee MacKenzie is a screenwriter, film director and wood-scroll artist who earned his Master of Fine Arts Degree at USC School of Cinematic Arts on a George Lucas Scholarship. He has a BFA in Creative Media from Champlain College. His films have screened at film festivals across the US and internationally including The American Pavilion Emerging Filmmaker Showcase at Cannes Film Festival and Tribeca Film Festival. His 2021 film There’s a Prison on Fire in the Forest, an animated film about a riot in a for-profit prison, won the jury award for American short films at Champs-Élysées Film Festival in Paris, France.
MacKenzie’s path into art began as a teenager, where he learned the intricate practice of cutting wood scrollwork in a prison woodshop. His film career began while working as a prison movie projectionist where he projected movies onto a wall for his peers to watch. His art focuses on narrative storytelling to foster empathy, human connection, and understanding between people, while his films often focus on childhood, magical realism, and stories of overcoming life challenges.