Media Feature:
The Just and the Blind
The Just and the Blind
March 2019, Carnegie Hall, New York City
The 2019 Create Justice forum took place at Carnegie Hall, and kicked off with the world premiere performance of The Just and the Blind in Zankel Hall.
A pressing and poignant new work by longtime collaborators—composer/violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain and spoken word artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph—The Just and the Blind explores fatherhood, race, and the justice system through spoken word, movement, and music.
The Just and the Blind is commissioned by Carnegie Hall as part of its 125 Commissions Project.
Create Justice ACT 4: A New Beginning
March 2019, Carnegie Hall, New York City
Members of our Create Justice family shared from across the country and across perspectives how their engagement with Create Justice has had concrete impacts on their work and their local communities. The Action Groups shared their emerging priorities, and engaged participants to help refine and prioritize collective work. Young people were meaningfully engaged at every level. We centered the practice of art-making itself as core to how we engage with each other and with moving the work forward.
Photo Credit: Fadi Kheir
Create Justice ACT 3: Transitions
March 2018, Carnegie Hall, New York City
With the third gathering, leadership expanded to include wider representation and meaningful youth involvement in decision-making. We launched three action groups, meant to carry forward to collective priorities around Policy, Peer Learning, and Research.
Photo Credit: Fadi Kheir
Create Justice ACT 2: Digging In and Getting Messy
September 2017, Los Angeles
(Armory Center for the Arts and Kilpatrick youth detention facility)
As we gathered a second time, we invested more deeply in engaging young people to tell their stories, and lift up their perspective. As we dug into the questions, we found that we could not separate the questions, or the work in front of us without also wrestling with historic systems of racism and oppression. We were able to articulate the need for "both-and." How to address immediate need, and how to change the systems that create that need.
Photo Credit: Maira Rios, Cam Sanders
Create Justice ACT 1: Setting the Stage, Asking Questions
March 2017, Carnegie Hall, New York City
The inaugural gathering of Create Justice brought together arts practitioners, justice advocates, funders, policymakers, and public partners from across the country to explore the landscape around the intersection of arts and youth justice reform. We engaged in artistic performance, deep reflection, and relationship building as we asked the question: How to we artistically co-design youth centered systems whose outcomes are justice?
Photo Credit: Fadi Kheir