Community Conversations

Community Conversations Overview

Arts and Justice Community Conversations are facilitated discussions and/or convenings developed in response to identified community needs, prompts, and collective advocacy opportunities.

Community Conversations bring together a wide range of stakeholders, depending on the topic, including practitioners, experts, educators, students, and beyond to examine a topic, activate tools for community solutions, and empower participants to engage in change making through an artistic lens.

Previous Community Conversations

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Arts Education, Health & Resiliency Research Convening (2024)

In November 2024, four collaborating arts organizations gathered together in Brooklyn, NY to begin identifying a central research question that will inform methodologies for program delivery and assessment, applicable to not only these four collaborating organizations, but transferrable to aligned organizations across the US. The four collaborating nonprofits – Keshet Dance Company (ABQ, NM); Arts for Healing and Justice Network (LA, CA); and Brooklyn Arts Exchange (Brooklyn, NY); and Carnegie Hall (NY, NY) – each have a long history and unique expertise utilizing the arts as a vehicle for healing, resiliency, and justice in youth populations around the country, and draw on many decades of successes, challenges, learnings, and observations to inform a centralized research question which, once formally investigated, can be utilized to strengthen and support similar organizations across the country.

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Diverting from Detention: Dismantling the School to Prison Pipeline (2023-2024)

This conversation, led by dynamic youth leaders, focuses on understanding the intricate web of the School-to-Prison Pipeline. Examining the ripple effect of decisions made in the school systems leading to the juvenile prison ecosystem and offering opportunities for solutions at both the classroom and systems levels.

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Community and Healing vs. Punishment and Incarceration (2022-2023)

This conversation is a youth-led, interactive presentation and facilitated conversation focused on the current state of our juvenile legal systems, and proposed alternatives for a stronger and healthier community.

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Slay the Dragon Viewing and Discussion (2022)

Community Conversations and Movie Excerpts from “Slay the Dragon” – A grassroots movement led by a young woman with no prior political experience gathers influence to protect voting rights and end gerrymandering, where electoral maps are re-drawn to serve the party in power. Keshet’s Arts and Justice Youth Leadership Council is hosting a community conversation evening with excerpts from “Slay the Dragon” to provide information on gerrymandering, how it affects communities and what we can do to change it.

Community Conversations