PAST
EVENT
CONSTRUCTING JUSTICE:
TRANSFORMING THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
LEAP + Art For Justice hosted a special exhibition and artist talk at ARRAY's Creative Campus in LA.
With Deanna Van Buren of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, an Art For Justice grantee partner, and Los Angeles based architect Demar Matthews, this event featured conversation and exhibits centered on envisioning restorative justice in communities most impacted by mass incarceration and police brutality.
Press play on the recap video above to learn more!
FEATURED SPEAKERS
Deanna
Van Buren
Deanna Van Buren is the co-founder and executive director of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces. An architecture and real estate nonprofit working to end mass incarceration through place-based solutions, DJDS builds infrastructure that address its root causes: poverty, racism, unequal access to resources, and the criminal justice system itself. She has been profiled by The New York Times, and her TED Talk on what a world without prisons could look like has been viewed more than one million times. Van Buren received her MArch from Columbia University and is an alumna of the Loeb Fellowship at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.
Designing Justice + Designing Spaces (DJDS) is an architecture and real estate development non-profit working to end mass incarceration through place-based solutions. DJDS builds infrastructure that address the root causes of mass incarceration: poverty, racism, unequal access to resources, and the criminal justice system itself. Unlike the traditional adversarial and punitive architecture of justice—courthouses, prisons and jails—DJDS creates spaces and buildings for restorative justice, community building, and housing for people coming out of incarceration. Examples include restorative justice centers, which bring offenders and victims together to repair the relationship breach caused by a crime and build pathways to reconciliation; mobile resource centers, which deliver economic, educational, and social resources to under-resourced communities; and re-entry housing for people coming out of incarceration.
Notable projects include Restore Oakland, the reimagining of the Atlanta City Detention Center into a Center for Equity, the Near Westside Peacemaking Center, and The Women’s Mobile Refuge Center.
Demar
Matthews
Born in Moreno Valley, CA, Demar received his Bachelor’s from HBCU Lincoln University of PA, and his Master’s of architecture at Woodbury University where he was awarded the Graduate Thesis Prize for his project Black Architecture: Unearthing the Black Aesthetic. His introduction to the field was through his article “A Black Architecture Education Experience” on archinect. Demar believes architecture and good design should not only be for the privileged. Every community deserves to be proud of the built environment around them, and the built environment around them should be based on the cultures of the people who live there; regardless of income, race, and gender.
His company, Offtop Design is on a mission to improve the built environment in black neighborhoods through architecture and design using a comprehensive and collaborative method that draws on strong relationships with local communities and a deep understanding of their issues. Offtop is focused on the intersection of architecture, Black art, culture,and experience.
Hosted By
Founded by Agnes Gund, Art For Justice provides direct grants to artists and advocates focused on safely reducing the prison population, promoting justice reinvestment and creating art that changes the narrative around mass incarceration.
Established by ARRAY’s founder Ava Duvernay, LEAP is the Law Enforcement Accountability Project, a propulsive fund dedicated to elevating activist storytelling as Black artists pursue narrative change and disrupt the code of silence that exists around police aggression and misconduct.