How We Can Help
Workshops
Trainings
DJ+DS instructors are available to train on the use of specific tools in the toolkit, and on the development and facilitation of customized workshops, as well as provide content, design, and technical support from start to finish of a workshop.
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DJ+DS is working to re-design criminal justice environments to move them toward restoration and healing through a customized community engagement process, often in high security settings, that fosters the creation of new justice spaces. Our workshops invite incarcerated people, students, and professionals to engage in this process and the envisioning of new types of justice environments. Conducted over a period of two to ten hours (minimum), participants engage in learning and discussion about restorative justice and design, learn basic design skills, identify spaces to re-design or create from scratch based on their needs as they see them, and participate in a design process in which participants may create image boards, make models, or sketch to contribute to the design and development of architecture or planning projects that will be or could be part of their setting, whether it is a correctional facility, rehabilitation center, or even in their community.
About the creators:
Barb Toews
Barb Toews is an experienced restorative justice practitioner and assistant professor in criminal justice at University of Washington Tacoma. Her current research focuses on the relationship between restorative justice, environmental design, and psycho-social-behavioral-judicial outcomes. In addition to DJ+DS workshops, she has taught undergraduate and graduate courses on restorative justice and design, both inside and outside correctional facilities. Barb’s publications include The Little Book of Restorative Justice for People in Prison and Critical Issues in Restorative Justice, co-edited with Howard Zehr, as well as guides and manuals for restorative justice practitioners.
Deanna Van Buren
Deanna Van Buren is a thought leader researching, formulating, and advocating for restorative justice centers, a radical transformation of justice architecture. She is the founding partner of FOURM, design studio, a firm creating new infrastructure for peacemaking and restorative justice. Deanna spent thirteen years as a design lead on domestic, institutional, and design education projects in the bay area, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East prior to starting her practice in 2010. She has recently been awarded a Byrne Justice Innovation Grant with the Center for Court Innovation to develop a peacemaking center in Syracuse, N.Y., the first of its kind in the United States. Funded by the Fetzer Institute, her practice is also currently developing and implementing design studios with incarcerated men and women for the Designing Justice+Designing Spaces project as well as writing the first design guidelines for creating restorative spaces in schools. Deanna received her B.S. in Architecture from the University of Virginia, a MARCH from Columbia University, and has recently completed The Loeb Fellowship at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.
