Grantee Spotlight: Creative Justice

The RALIANCE team is always eager to hear perspectives from our grantees and learn how they’re supporting survivors and making communities safer. Creative Justice is a two-time recipient of a RALIANCE Impact Grant, having been honored in both 2024 and 2025. Through the RALIANCE Impact Grant Program, RALIANCE has disbursed nearly $4 million dollars in grant funding from the National Football League to prevention programs and organizations like Creative Justice that are working to address sexual violence and support survivors.

We sat down recently with Aaron Counts, Co-Founder and Curricular Coach at Creative Justice, an organization using art to address systemic issues and promote individual and community-level healing.

Can you provide a brief overview of your organization and the work it does to address the issue of sexual violence?

Aaron Counts: Creative Justice was founded 10 years ago to provide an arts-based alternative to incarceration for court-involved young people with the intention of empowering individual and systemic transformation. Violence doesn’t happen in a vacuum, it’s the result of individual and collective decisions born out of the conditions in which each of us exist. Creative Justice engages youth in the communities most affected by systems of oppression and interpersonal violence to help them reimagine a society in which their liberation is not only possible, but sustainable by the community itself. 

Creative Justice programming focuses on building individual and collective power by using art to understand the root causes of inequity, as well as to articulate the power and potential of our communities. Since our inception we have been recognized by the King County Prosecutor’s Office and the courts as a viable alternative to youth incarceration, and by the community as a safe, healing space for young people to better understand and respond to the conditions in which they live, building protective factors that help us all live in a safer, more just environment. In those spaces, people are healthier, less likely to commit harm, and better able to heal from any harm or violence that they have experienced.

Can you talk about the use of art in your programming and how it serves as a healing tool for survivors?

AC: There is so much great research on the therapeutic effects of keeping a creative practice – from its self-soothing effects, to increased self-esteem, to developing our muscles to try new things in the safety of a supportive community. At Creative Justice, we also believe in the power of art to speak truth to power in ways that other modes of communication can’t. Through a creative lens, we are sometimes better able to articulate how we’re feeling and what we have been through, even when we have difficulty articulating those realities in words. Doing so through art also increases the ability to be heard by those who might not otherwise hear us. Art feeds our spirit, it makes us think and it helps us visualize the world we want and need. 

In our Heal program, half of the time is spent understanding and practicing restorative practices, and the other half is spent deepening that understanding through creative prompts that support the same themes. Participants work individually to process their own ideas and feelings, then collaborate to articulate those of the collective. In that type of environment, participants are able to see and be seen, hear and be heard, understand and be understood, which helps create healthy relationships in which harm is less likely to occur, and healing is more accessible when it does.

When you received your initial RALIANCE Impact Grant, what did that funding allow Creative Justice to do?

AC: Creative Justice is committed to the reality that community healing includes opportunities for the growth of each of its members. RALIANCE’s Impact funding helped us provide essential leadership and professional development opportunities to our Heal program fellow, who is a former program participant herself. With well-resourced program support, this fellow was able to complete an arts therapy training program, as well as begin learning and practicing curriculum development and group facilitation skills that benefit all group members, from participants to program staff and directors.

How has that program grown in the years since its institution?

AC: Creative Justice was founded by a community work group consisting of young people impacted by the criminal punishment system, family members of impacted youth, artists, a defense attorney, judge, and prosecutor. The workgroup designed Creative Justice with arts-focused learning to assist in healing the harm and impacts of punitive systems. With community members, families, and allied systems partners invested in the process, what began as an innovative yearlong project developed into its own organization.

Since that time, we have grown from an incarceration alternative to a more robust organization that fosters individual and collective health and well-being, offers pathways to employment, and helps weave a wider safety net for young people with restorative spaces that promote healing, joy as well as mental and emotional support for those who are experiencing a tough time. We have developed partnerships that help transform the material conditions of our participants with paid training and employment opportunities through our peer mentor artist training program, our program fellowship positions, and even barista training program in our recently opened café.

Since partnering with RALIANCE through the Impact grant, we have been able to better resource our program fellowship, especially within our Heal program, which provides youth with restorative circle training experience twice a week over the course of nine months, allowing us to find healthier ways to interact with one another and hold community members accountable in healthy, meaningful ways when they cause harm. 

How will this second Impact grant further Creative Justice’s mission?

AC: This second round of support will allow us to continue our dedication to growing opportunities for youth leadership, especially for those young people who are often ignored when leadership development opportunities come along – typically those who have been incarcerated or otherwise impacted by the criminal-legal system. As this current fellowship cohort ends, we will be able to start a second cohort of two program fellows, while still maintaining a budget to promote two current fellows into full time staff positions in program coordinator roles. This commitment to providing opportunities for growth allows us to model what reconciliation and restoration can look like – rather than pushing people aside when they have caused harm, we can commit further to the principles of community-building and accountability where healing takes root and can thrive.

What is most important for people to know about this work and the communities you serve?

AC: It is important to remember that this work is about ensuring all of us have an opportunity to thrive and live healthy lives. Youth who come from marginalized communities or who have been impacted by criminal-legal or child welfare systems – even those who may have caused harm to others – want and need the same things we all do: safety, security, a sense of purpose and a place to belong. At Creative Justice, we try to build that world within our programming, and help our participants practice a radical imagination in which they can envision that world in the community at large. 

RALIANCE is a trusted adviser for organizations committed to building cultures that are safe, equitable, and respectful. RALIANCE offers unparalleled expertise in serving survivors of sexual harassment, misconduct, and abuse which drives our mission to help organizations across sectors create inclusive environments for all. For more information, please visit www.RALIANCE.org.