THE CIRCLE KEEPERS
RECENT VIDEOS
WHO ARE WE
The Circle Keepers / Circle Up! Restorative Justice Youth Arts dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline by training & empowering youth as restorative justice practitioners, community organizing activists and socially conscious artists who bring healing, restoration and transformation into their communities in ways that center the voices, lived experiences and yearnings of young people in their pursuit of peace, safety, healing, and justice.
SOUNDS OF JUSTICE & JOY
Music is a core feature of our work at the Circle Keepers. Jamming for Justice & Joy is a mixed ensemble, activist music education program that trains young people as artivists (artists-activists) and cultural workers, and Liberation Drum Circles engages youth in social justice activism through drumming, singing and chanting, teaching how percussion music can be a tool for enjoyment, self-realization and liberation, for themselves and for each other as a community.
OUR THEORY OF CHANGE
Restorative Justice rather than being a set of school discipline interventions is a “paradigm shift” (Zher, 1990. p220) must reframe how we live in community, what we value and how we collectively address conflict, harm and violence.
Restorative justice tenets such as accountability, engagement, dignity, agency and restoration must be at the center when addressing interpersonal harm in schools.
Restorative Justice must be antiracist, grounded on indigenous and Black epistemologies such as knowledge of self, wisdom of elders, respect for all living things, and caring for the most vulnerable.
Restorative Justice in school must place youth in positions of leadership in the pursuit of solving the issues that most affect them. The youth are not the problem, they are the solution!
