Dr. Amber Johnson, of Saint Louis University, will be here with her "Justice Fleet" project, debuting it with us. The mobile museum will be located on the quad between Faner and the Student Services building, and open on Thursday, 3/30 from 11 am to 3 pm, and on Friday, 3/31, from 11 am to 2 pm. Here's how Dr. Johnson describes the project:
The Journey To Justice Mobile Museum
Housed inside of a large moving truck, the Journey to Justice mobile pop-up museum is an interactive and hypermodal space that fosters dialogue around social justice and forgiveness as public policy. Patrons begin inside the truck, listening to sounds and viewing images portraying the history of racial and social injustice in Saint Louis and surrounding areas. Patrons have the opportunity to add their stories and thoughts to the museum (materials provided). In the next space, housed outside of the truck, patrons are able to participate in the forgiveness quilt. The Forgiveness Quilt is an art installation project that asks, “What would our world look like if we approached forgiveness as public policy?” Participants are asked to be vulnerable and transparent about their biases and prejudices and to portray them through art on a canvas. Once they depict their bias(es) with words, images, and color, they are instructed to ask for forgiveness and forgive themselves and others for their difference. Working together, participants layer the canvases onto a single board and use the empty spaces between the canvases to write positive affirmations. This act of forgiveness is a deliberate act of remembering, re- processing, understanding, letting go, and replacing. At the end of each day, all forgiveness canvases, images, sound, and text recording from that day are added to the museum and an additional digital space. Over time, all the spaces, digital and real, would blend together in a larger discussion available on and offline.