These conversations offer an opportunity to create a new narrative for the community. “We’re one of the poorest counties in the country,” Weems says, “and we’re in a food desert. Young people have to leave the county for work opportunities. We still have 100 percent Black public schools and 100 percent white private academies. We have an opportunity to address those things during this process.”

“We’ve really galvanized around the idea that we need arts and storytelling to process the pain of the community. But we also need it as a way to point to a different future. If you don’t do that, you just re-create the systems that are already in place.”

Performing Statistics began in 2015 as a one-time project of ART 180, a youth arts organization in Richmond, Virginia. It has since taken on many different shapes (and names) before becoming an independent project in July 2019.

In 2017 in Virginia, 8,009 young people ages 8 to 17 were incarcerated, and Black youth were seven times more likely to be among them. In response to this crisis, Performing Statistics asked, “How would juvenile justice reform differ if it were led by currently and formerly incarcerated youth?”

This approach centers the leadership of those most affected: “We do this work because youth voice and agency have been stripped away, for far too long, by the systems that most impact us,” the organization says in its values statement. “Young people have a lot to say, and we work to ensure their voices are heard in spaces where they have been historically excluded. This means fostering a project culture that is flexible, caring, healing, and youth-centered.”

Programs include a holistic reentry program for youth returning home after detention or incarceration, as well as cultural organizing projects like #NoKidsInPrison, a digital experience and film that leads viewers through the past and present of youth incarceration; and Freedom Constellations, an interactive mural directly across from the headquarters of the Virginia Commonwealth University campus police, which uses light and audio to communicate young people’s visions for a world without youth prisons.

In 2016, Performing Statistics partnered with incarcerated youth, artists, advocates, and police at the Richmond Police Department to create an art camp. From the police department, recruits, beat police, detectives, and school resource officers came to see and discuss the art and training manuals made by the youth. The different collaborators convened in a community forum where they used art and performance to intervene and reimagine scenarios, and to ultimately discuss solutions. For example, youth, officers, advocates, teachers, and other community members broke into groups and were given scenarios where a teen was arrested. They were tasked to redesign a scene with an outcome where the young person does not enter the juvenile justice system.

Performing Statistics Creative Director Mark Strandquist says of the organization’s eight years of workshops, exhibits, campaigns, and public art projects, “None of that would have happened if we didn't design our workshops with as much intention and creativity as the actual art projects we're making. It's just as important to have incredible artists in the room working with young folks as it is to have adult and peer mentors who have gone through the system themselves. We don't ask young folks to dig up and parade past traumas...instead we use art as a rare and powerful medium to dream and envision a more just and beautiful future…. Our hope is that they see how important their stories and dreams are, that they fall in love with the power of their voice.”

Another installation of Freedom Constellations is in progress at Richmond City Hall, where viewers will be able to experience augmented-reality animation and audio by two local young people, Ta’Dreama McBride and Clyde Walker, articulating their vision for a future where they and their peers can be safe, healthy, and free.

“City Hall, where on a daily basis, adults are making laws, writing budgets, and deciding priorities that impact young folks’ lives and futures, is now literally covered with the portraits of young leaders fighting to create a world where all youth are free,” says Strandquist. “For me, this project is also about extending the limits of how a society views public safety.… You need to shift culture before you can ever shift policies. These kinds of projects can help lay that groundwork, can help push cities and communities to question the past, to understand the urgency of the present, and to commit to a better future.”