Healing justice is mobile. We bring art, dialogue, and community care directly to the people.
About Us
The Story Behind
The Justice Fleet
We were founded in 2017 after students suggested the activities that the founder facilitated in class were transformative and could benefit communities outside of higher education. After a year of stakeholder and design meetings and grant writing, The Justice Fleet was created. The first exhibit, Radical Forgiveness, was built using $8,000 in grant money. Since then we have grown to three complete exhibits (Radical Forgiveness, Radical Imagination, and Transfuturism). We are in the process of beginning our 4th exhibit build, a Grief Garden, which is a safe, public, green space for communities to grieve via horticulture therapy following instances of systemic injustice. Up next, Revolutionary Masculinity & Black Girl Magic, spaces to interrogate and celebrate gender expression at the intersection of race futurity!
The original exhibit was housed inside of a box truck that was donated in kind. However, since COVID-19, we have become fully-pop-up as we work towards the reveal of The Justice Fleet 2.0, which will encompass community grant giving, an educational platform, retreats, and a fleet of mobile experiences housed in RVs powered by the sun! The Justice Fleet has been recognized for our work in various major news outlets. We are the recipient of 11 grants and four national awards.
The Justice Fleet Museum is a mobile networkof experiences that foster healing through art, dialogue, and play.
Founder Dr. Amber Johnson
As a scholar/artist/activist, Dr. Johnson aims to illuminate the language, exigency, sound, and aesthetics of various social movements. Their research and activism focus on performances of identity, protest, and social justice in digital and lived spaces. As a polymath, their mixed-media artistry involves working with metals, recycled and reclaimed goods, photography, poetry, percussion, and paint to interrogate systems of oppression.
Dr. Amber Johnson is a scholar, artist, and activist whose teaching and research have shaped their creative practice for more than a decade. Through art, dialogue, and community engagement, Dr. Johnson explores systems of oppression and social justice in ways that move beyond traditional academic spaces. Their work is rooted in the belief that art can create access, understanding, and healing where language alone cannot.
artistic practice spans metals, paint, photography, recycled and reclaimed materials, poetry, percussion, and installation art. They began working with mixed media in 2008 and have since used creative expression as a tool for activism, education, and community healing. As the creator of The Justice Fleet, Dr. Johnson began experimenting with mobile museums as a method for social justice inquiry, art activism, and ethnography—bringing conversations about self-love, community, and healing directly into public spaces.
Currently, Dr. Johnson serves as Assistant Vice Chancellor and Chief of Staff for the Division of Equity & Inclusion at the University of California, Berkeley. Previously, they were an award-winning Professor of Communication and Social Justice and the Executive Director and co-founder of The Institute for Healing Justice and Equity at Saint Louis University. Dr. Johnson’s work continues to focus on humanizing equity, community-led engagement, and imagining more just and healing futures through art.
Meet the Team
Scott Emerson
Director Communication, Curriculum & Outreach
Sai Spurlock
Lead Facilitator & Assistant Curator
Monica O. Montgomery
Board Member
Amy Bautz
Board Member
Sponsors
Goals & Learning Outcomes
While visiting the truck, patrons will be able to:
Reflect on the importance of forgiveness and letting go of pain, hate, and fear that stem from our implicit and explicit biases.
Apply radical forgiveness in our immediate lives.
Begin to see difference as something worth celebrating in an effort to re-humanize people who are different.
Engage in dialogue with people who are different from us in an effort to re-humanize those who are different.
While visiting the truck, patrons will be able to:
Spark critical and imaginative ideas around ways to better our world.
Engage in dialogue around what it means to critically imagine.
Engage in an experiential learning exercise designed to help patrons think critically about societal structures and the injustices they create for different groups of people.
While visiting the truck, patrons will be able to:
Explore gender as a social construct.
Learn about the inequality an injustice that trans and gender non-conforming people experience.
Celebrate the varying manifestations of gender in trans and gender non-conforming people.
Re-humanize trans and gender non-conforming people through dialogue in an effort to reduce discursive and physical violence.
While visiting the truck, patrons will be able to:
Engage in dialogue about the inequality and injustices Black girls, women, and femmes experience.
Humanize black girls.
Create space for Black girls to explore their own identities and celebrate their differences.
Spark excitement, love, communal healing, and empowerment for black girls through play.
Provide information about the grieving process and why it is a necessary component of healing.
Create a safe space for community members to grieve publicly or in isolation.
Acknowledge that there are many ways to grieve.
Provide creative and inspirational outlets for people to access and process their own grief.
Bring community together in times of communal crisis so people can grieve in ways that promote healing.
Destigmatize grief so that people do not think of it as a solely private activity for people who are weak, but rather a healthy process that is necessary for everyone.
Ensure green spaces flourish in Black communities, rural communities, poor communities, and communities of color.
The exhibits travel to communities and “pop up” at community organizations, in parks, in busy parking lots, on busy streets, outside of museums, on or near college campuses, at music festivals, and during organized community events throughout the United States. The outsides of the exhibits are designed to invite people in and welcome them to the different spaces.
Join Us in Creating Space for Healing and Justice
Each Justice Fleet exhibit is an interactive, mobile experience rooted in healing justice. Through art, storytelling, dialogue, and creative play, our exhibits invite communities to reflect on lived experiences, imagine new futures, and engage in collective care.