The Art & Justice Project
As part of my collaborative, social practice work, I have been piloting a series of collaborative projects. These projects uniquely combine oral history, literature, public art, and conversation to deeply engage rural communities in public engagment that promotes and facilitates conversations about social justice, equity, inclusion, and diversity with community members in small towns across the country. These projects are collaboratively designed by local communities and work with support of municipalities, public schools, universities, historical societies, arts organizations, and individual artists, students, and community members.
The current iteration, The Lamoille Art & Justice Project, led by people of the global majority,* is a collaboration that merges public art, oral histories, podcasting, and literature to foster connection and community for PGM in Vermont across generations. Our goals are to bring awareness to the enduring inequities within our region, and activate systemic change through collaborative movement in diverse contexts: governing bodies, businesses, neighborhoods, communities, schools, and individuals. Utilizing the power of literature, oral histories, public murals, and podcasts by PGM, this project seeks to engage local artists, educators, students, allies, and organizations in advancing racial equity and justice in Lamoille County.
*We adopt the term “People of the Global Majority,” or PGM, as an alternative to BIPOC (1) to honor the fact that indigenous, brown, and black people make up the majority of the global population, (2) to decenter whiteness, and (3) to reject the “othering” or “minoritizing” of PGM in our language and communities.