About
The Creative Prisons Project is an independent, volunteer initiative in collaboration with others sharing the project's aim, including the Museum for Black Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice, Copyright Alliance, First Step Alliance, and others.
Principal
John R. Whitman, Ph.D. teaches and consults in business and nonprofit management with a specialty in the social economy and applying educational strategies to solve social problems. He has taught at American University, Babson College, Georgetown University, Harvard University Extension School, Northeastern University, and The University of Alabama in Huntsville. He is founder and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal for Creativity Inside and co-founder of the Museum for Black Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He has also founded companies in software development (Oakland Group, Inc.), survey research (Surveytools Corporation), and film production (Camisary, Inc.). Publications include books and articles on the social economy, social entrepreneurship, philanthropy, intellectual property, cooperatives, creativity in prisons, and library management. Dr. Whitman received his A.B. from Boston University, Ed.M. from Harvard University, and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto (dissertation: Evaluating Philanthropic Foundations: A Comparative Social Values Approach, including foundations in Canada, Europe, and the United States). Dr. Whitman resides in Chicago. His latest book is Prisons of Creativity: Artistic Innovation During Incarceration (Routledge, 2025). ORCID: https://orcid.org/my-orcid?orcid=0000-0002-8286-1255.
Advisory Board
Ana Chamberlen is Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick (UK) and specialises in the sociology of prisons and punishment. She leads on a programme of research titled ‘Captive Arts’ (funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council and various other smaller sources of funding) that investigates prisoner artists’ experiences and motivations to engage with creative practices in spaces of confinement. The Captive Arts project explores a range of art forms emerging from English prisons, including, visual arts, theatre, creative writing, and music, and explores the expressive potential of artists in captivity to communicate critiques of punishment. Ana also coordinates the International Justice Arts Network (IJAN) bringing together artists, criminal justice arts and education practitioners, academics, people with lived experience of criminal justice as well as activists across the world. IJAN coordinates a series of online and in-person activities seeking to foster international collaborations linking social justice and arts efforts. Ana is co-author of Questioning Punishment (Routledge, 2024), author of Embodying Punishment (Oxford University Press, 2018) and co-editor of a series of edited collections including: Carceral Arts (forthcoming, Bristol University Press), The Embodied State (Routledge, 2025) Geographies of Gendered Punishment (Palgrave, 2024), and Decolonising the Criminal Question (Oxford University Press, 2023).
Nancy Eiden is a Financial Services Professional and Founder and Board Chair, First Step Alliance. Nancy is a results-driven leader with over 25 years of executive-level experience in global financial institutions. Her diverse background includes wealth management, marketing, operations, and compliance. Among her many career accomplishments, Nancy was CEO and board member of a New York bank-owned broker-dealer, where she played a key role in building and scaling the firm. She also served as CEO of the investment and insurance subsidiaries of one of New Jersey’s largest credit unions, driving business growth and member access to financial services. Dedicated to advancing financial inclusion, in 2020 Nancy founded First Step Alliance, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit committed to economic empowerment for justice-involved individuals. The organization’s educational and mentoring programs help people improve their financial health and pursue financial stability. She also serves as a certified mentor with SCORE, the nation’s largest network of small business mentors and is a board member of Farm Sahel, a non-profit working to improve gender equity and food security in West Africa. Nancy earned a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, with concentrations in finance and management. She holds several securities industry licenses through LPL Financial, Member FINRA/SIPC and is the managing member of a certified Woman-Owned Small Business (WOSB).