Alex Kimball Williams (she/they) is an artivist (artist + activist) whose work centers creativity as a social justice skill. Her work reimagines traditional Indigenous melodic motifs on synthesizers with elements of meditation. Her work blends poetry & music while examining topics such as climate justice, Indigenous worldviews, & mental health. “Bad Alaskan” is the name of Alex’s project, which fuses her training across classical, jazz, film music, & more, bringing cinematic & justice oriented experiences to various audiences.

Alex offers a variety of creative workshops including music writing, poetry writing (black-out poetry, cut-up poetry), zine making, affirmations & advocacy exercises. Her performances involve autogenic techniques of releasing stress, like reminders for audience members to relax their shoulders. She’s completed a couple residencies including public programming components, particularly with youth ages 8-18 & grassroots approaches.

She’s also participated as a music instructor in several local music camps, & employs teaching methods from across these experiences in her workshops. Alex’s workshops center improvisation techniques to strengthen coping mechanisms & our ability to self-advocate by practicing controlled discomfort with creative prompts. All my performances & workshops additionally explore Indigenous cultures, histories, & issues.

I have a tiered fee system based on the organization or group I’m working with. Larger institutions (i.e. Universities) are charged more compared to community-based organizations or BIPOC-led groups. The fee also depends on total time involved, for example with traveling. $250 is my base price. For a typical 60-90 minute workshop/interactive performance at a mid-size organization, including maybe an hour of driving time each way, $500.

I have several workshops in my portfolio to offer, but they all center building capacity in the individual to navigate hard situations, advocate for themselves &/or others, & to find creative outlets as expression therapy. Whether that’s through writing music together & writing a collective poem, or both. One of my favorite workshops is cut-up poetry, where I bring my kit with cut-up words for participants to arrange into poems. I like that even people or kids who can’t read or write can still get involved, & they actually ‘write’ some of the best examples because they’re not in their head about how to arrange the words. It’s a great picture opportunity too, & allows people to get into writing poetry even if they don’t see themselves as writers.

Another workshop I enjoy offering is the affirmations workshop where participants flip the script on their negative self-talk & take control of their inner (creative) voice. Participants create a mini-zine with all the things they’re worthy of, as frequent reminders of their worth. This also helps build connections among participants who are learning more about the inner dialogues of their neighbors, who maybe they thought “had it all together”. This workshop stimulates a lot of great conversations & appreciation for the ways art can enrich our lives.

None, I don’t like to offer workshops with expensive materials because the goal is to share replicable, repeatable, accessible activities. My materials list is generally blank paper, scissors, & sometimes markers or old recycled books.

See Educational activity section, but additionally I can participate in panels or festivals.

Resume

• Alex Kimball Williams