In an earlier episode of The Common Creative Podcast, we interviewed Rachel Barnard, an Australian architect who went to New York on a scholarship but ended up creating an amazing not-for-profit called Young New Yorkers, an art-based program for teenagers who were being arrested, prosecuted and sentenced as adults for what is usually understood to be youthful behaviour. Most of the young people being arrested in NYC were African American or Latinx. Rachel’s art program offered an alternative to incarceration to young people who had been arrested. At the completion of the 8-week program, the group created powerful installations in the courtroom that advocated for criminal legal reforms. The participants then went on to have their cases closed and no conviction recorded.
While the program made an incredible difference for each young person involved, the compelling bit of the story is the change this program made, not to the young people but to the judges and prosecutors trying their cases. When Rachel stepped down after a decade of leadership, some judges wrote to her mother to share that she had made them better judges. The judges could look past the rap sheets and see these kids for who they really were, as extraordinary young…
