Student provides platform for advice from former American prisoners in historic project

Nathan Holt joined the Brown Creek Engagement Project in July 2025 as a Media Assistant to Creative Writing lecturer, Dr Alicia Rouverol.

The project began through an oral history workshop Alicia led at Brown Creek Correctional Institution (North Carolina, USA), a medium-security, all-male prison, more than two decades ago, under the sponsorship of the Southern Oral History Program, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she worked at the time.

The three-year initiative sought to use oral history, storytelling and performance as a tool for the men in Brown Creek’s education programme to reach young people, in the hopes of steering them away from landing in prison.

Alicia said: “The men were cut off from their predecessors, and they were cut off from the next generation as well.

“I went in and found the men were very keen to have their stories shared with ‘at-risk youth’, and that was the inception of the project.

"Storytelling was, for the men, a way too to keep their identities alive.”

In 2001, this motivation to share the lived experiences of prisoners resulted in a performance involving eight of the men for audiences of ‘at-risk youth’, co-created by Alicia, theatre director Marlene Richardson and the men. 125 young people, already in the judicial system, attended the performance over multiple days.

The play, Leaves of Magnolia, focused on the men’s journeys leading to incarceration. A magnolia never loses its leaves; this served as a metaphor for the men’s identities that could not be stripped away, even in an institution like prison.

The performance incorporated themes of abuse, searching for belonging, early run-ins with the law, and life in prison. Some of which aligned heavily with the young audience.

In August 2023, Rouverol, with support from University of Salford English Research funding, undertook a reunion with the men, long since released. Five out of the eight original performers were brought back into the project.

At this point, Rouverol had built connections with the men and established a level of trust from the years spent on the project and subsequent interviewing and conversing. She had followed one in particular, from their time in prison well into their release.

She said: “The reunion was very meaningful for the men, and when we met up again in May we’d made the transition into being current with their lives.

“When you do a long-term project – and this is now a longitudinal study – the relationship becomes much more profound over time.”

With support from the University of Salford Public Policy Support Fund, Rouverol interviewed the men once again in May 2025 with her team, including filmmaker Kenny Dalsheimer, where they created the interview content for the video clips (as shown below).

The clips also featured Dalsheimer’s footage from the original performances and photographs of the men and youth taken by project photographer Cedric N. Chatterley.

Alicia then recruited Nathan Holt to adapt the videos for social media and pull out the key messages to reach the current generation’s at-risk youth.

Nathan was tasked to create shorter clips from Dalsheimer’s five long video interviews (shown below). He aimed to capture the stories and advice in detail for the motivational shorts to be shared on TikTok and Instagram with the hopes of going viral.

He said: “I wanted to do something more meaningful in the summer.

“I looked at the content and thought, well, this is inspiring, you have these people who have been incarcerated who are saying ‘don't make the same mistakes that we did’.”

With the popularity of motivational shorts and ‘hopecore’ across social media platforms, Nathan knew this was a route of success to go down.

Each video clip gives different inspirational advice focusing on the range of experiences each man had dealt with in and out of prison. This includes emphasis on achieving an education and not giving up.

Reflecting on Nathan’s contribution, Rouverol added: “We were treating Nathan like a professional; and that’s what we need to do for our students if they’re going to go out and perform in this line of work.

“At the end of the project, Nathan had really stood up to the task and the shorts are fantastic.”

Nathan’s involvement in the project extended the message from a previously limited audience to a wider reach.

His shorts are posted on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, where he has worked his influence on each interview to appeal to the platform’s users.

Rouverol will continue to develop the project through a forthcoming book which she hopes to begin writing next summer. It will explore the men’s stories and the challenges to identity they faced whilst incarcerated.

“The men never claimed they shouldn’t have been imprisoned,” she said, “rather it was how they were incarcerated. They recognised the profound effects on their identities.

“Prison, as it’s designed in the US,” Rouverol added, "serves to disconnect individuals right at the point where connection is most needed.”

The book, The Men at Brown Creek: Lessons from a Penitentiary, a hybrid work written in a fragmentary form, will address this and other issues, including a reconsideration of incarceration and “the systems we have tacitly agreed”. It will also consider alternative prisons systems elsewhere in the globe that are more rehabilitative in approach.