Our Mission
We are a national cultural organizing project that uses art to model, imagine and advocate for a world without prisons where young people are fully supported to be free. We believe youth prisons shouldn’t exist and young people most impacted by the juvenile justice system have the power to use art and storytelling to lead the vision toward a world beyond youth incarceration.
Staff
Slater Co-Director
(They/Them) co-directs Performing Statistics as an Arts Administrator and Youth Advocate. With a studio practice that centers surveillance culture in America and how it intersects with the growing incarceration of BIPOC youth, Slater recently joined the team as Project Director with Performing Statistics. Since 2013 their background in Art Therapy and Arts Administration has placed them on many teams and campaigns across the nation that center abolition as the only option. "FREE THEM ALL".
Mark Strandquist Co-Director
(he/him) co-directs Performing Statistics and has spent over a decade using art to help amplify, celebrate, and power social justice movements. As a creative director of Performing Statistics, he has worked with youth leaders to create immersive exhibitions, interactive public art, and multimedia projects that have helped advocates close a youth prison, directly engage system stakeholders, and share the dreams and demands of youth leaders with tens of thousands of people.
Kate DeCiccio co-director
(She/her) co-directs Performing Statistics as an artist & educator with a background in mental health. After teaching art in locked psychiatric settings, prisons and schools, Kate began working with Performing Statistics in 2016 as a teaching artist, then creative strategist & now a co-director. For over a decade Kate has focused on using portraiture for counter narrative, community storytelling & cultural strategy on behalf of abolition and collective liberation.
Have you heard about the Hive?
Some of Performing Statistics’s core team are stepping away to dig deep into abolitionist community development via their new program the HIVE!
Led by Executive Director Gina Lyles, the Hive believes that tangible investments in the diverse needs of young people can reverse the intergenerational trauma caused by systemic racism and solve our community's most pressing issues. Find out more about their amazing vision here!