DS4SI works with artists to find new ways of exploring and exposing the nuances of culture—working with their skills in the realms of the symbolic, the unspoken and the possible.  This paper explores three cultural tactics we've found effective in our work.

DS4SI designed and led large-scale adaptations of childhood street games like 4 square, hopscotch, taps and tug-of-war with over 200 youth and passers-by of all ages in Dorchester and Jamaica Plain, exploring the potential for intervening on social violence using unexpected tools like play, spectacle and delight.

We want to share what we've learned about deploying horizontal strategies in these situations. By horizontal strategies we mean solutions that are designed and deployed by the population which is experiencing the problem, and which are targeted towards creating widespread change within that population.

We feel artists are critical to social justice work because art works with symbols, and artists understand how people, communities and cultures use symbols to make collective meaning. Understanding this aspect of social life makes it possible to work within it as a point of leverage for social change.

Predatory planning is the intentional process of dispossession enacted through the simultaneous use of multiple, often globally powered, redevelopment tactics in the wake of trauma.

This document is meant to help social justice practitioners figure out the extent to which a social problem they face is enmeshed in the place they are trying to address it.