
JustArts is an invitation into heartful connection that transcends barriers.
JustArts is a community-driven initiative founded by Wendy Jason in March 2025 in response to the devastating and far-reaching impacts of the carceral system.
Rooted in a deep belief in the power of creative expression to fuel change, JustArts exists to foster human connection, challenge harmful narratives and systems, and elevate the creative voices of artists who are courageously resisting carceral silencing. Through exhibitions, workshops, consulting services, and collaborative projects, we cultivate spaces where creativity, trust, care, and integrity drive lasting change.
Our work is informed by close partnerships with directly impacted artists across the country. Their expertise, self-determination, and imagination are central to everything we do.

Meet Wendy
Curator.
Program Designer.
Bridge-Builder.
Advocate.
A socially engaged arts administrator, curator, program designer, and community builder, Wendy has worked with artists confined to carceral institutions for over 15 years. Wendy managed the Prison Arts Coalition, an online community and resource for people interested or engaged in arts programming in prisons, for 8 years before developing it into a grassroots organization called the Justice Arts Coalition (JAC). After founding JAC in 2019, she expanded the organization into a national hub for artists and advocates creating in and around the carceral system, organizing and curating exhibitions of work by system-impacted artists and developing programs that fostered creativity and connection across prison walls.
Wendy has facilitated creative writing, restorative justice, and peacebuilding workshops in carceral settings, schools, and community spaces nationwide and holds an MA in Coexistence and Conflict from Brandeis University, where her research focused on the intersection of peacebuilding and the arts. Her work centers the leadership and creativity of artists who are incarcerated, fostering collaborations rooted in integrity, care, and agency.
Wendy’s Practice
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For people pushed to the margins, art can be a means for healing and survival, an act of resistance and self-determination, and a vehicle for connection to others. My work centers the voices of artists who refuse to let carceral systems strip them of their humanity. I forge partnerships and develop infrastructures of support that affirm their contributions as vital to our cultural and communal landscapes. Through exhibitions, correspondence programs, and community events, I create opportunities for shared authorship, ethical exchange, and collective reflection, activating art as a tool for building solidarity and dismantling carceral logic.
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My approach is informed by years of community-based work and sustained engagement with artists on the inside. As manager of the Prison Arts Coalition and founding director of the Justice Arts Coalition, I led the development of exhibitions, national networks, and programs that facilitated thousands of exchanges across prison walls. Projects like ArtLinks brought people together in classrooms, Zoom rooms, churches, and art institutions to respond to creative work by incarcerated artists through letter writing. The pARTner Project, an arts-focused pen pal program, connected hundreds of artists inside and out for creative exchange through ethical collaboration and mutual care. These cross-boundary dialogues fostered understanding, challenged stigma, and helped cultivate a shared commitment to liberation and care.
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My ethos has been shaped by my early correspondence with an incarcerated pen pal, my work in shelters and treatment programs where I witnessed institutional harm masked as service and care, and my studies in peacebuilding and the arts and restorative and transformative justice frameworks. Facilitation in carceral settings affirmed my conviction that art invites the vulnerability and relationality needed to disrupt cycles of harm. Visionaries like adrienne maree brown, Mariame Kaba, Judith Tannenbaum, John Paul Lederach, and Luis Rodríguez, whose practices prioritize presence, curiosity, and lived experience, have taught me that change happens through proximity, and that movements thrive when rooted in interdependence, imagination, and integrity.
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I strive to foster conditions in which creativity moves people into deeper relationship with themselves and one another. I build programs that center the voices of artists experiencing incarceration, challenge carceral logic, and affirm the value of our shared humanity. Through reciprocal partnerships, accessible exhibitions, and participatory public programming, I seek to shift power, nurture connection, and expand the reach and impact of artistic labor too often hidden from view. I want to ensure that artists inside feel seen, supported, and integral to our creative communities, and that those outside who engage with them are moved to reflect, reimagine, and take collective action.

Testimonials
Every partnership, project, and collaboration helps move us closer to a world where creativity, justice, and human dignity thrive. We are proud to highlight some of the organizations and individuals who have been part of our journey.
The best reflections of our work come from those we collaborate with. Hear directly from partners and community members about their experiences working with JustArts founder Wendy Jason.
