Rachel G. Barnard is an arts and justice leader who in 2011 founded Young New Yorkers (YNY), the first arts-based alternative-to-incarceration program in New York. During her decade-long leadership over 1,400 young people were mandated to YNY’s programs and thereby avoided jail and an adult criminal record.

Inside YNY's Restorative Arts Diversion programs young people used art to first advocate for themselves, and then second advocate for criminal legal reform. Each program culminated in a participant-led “courtroom exhibition” that addressed a criminal legal issue of their choice. The young people focused their exhibitions on everything from police brutality, racial disparities, solitary confinement, gun violence, to the local impacts of mass incarceration. Participants then invited the very criminal legal professionals involved in their sentencing to attend their courtroom exhibitions. This practice humanised the culture of the courtrooms and led to better case outcomes for future young people.

As Hon Judge Calabrese said: Rachel not only made a difference to each person who participated in her program but changed the mindset forever of many judges and lawyers, thereby giving opportunities to young people for years to come.

In a former life Rachel was NYC’s Public Artist in Residence at the Department of Probation, and a practicing architect in New York and Australia.

Today, Rachel addresses the problem of burnout and compassion fatigue at direct service and social justice organisations. She does this via the distinctive arts-based restorative practices she developed at YNY. Yes, it involves sparkle.