Florida International University: Commons for Justice Evaluation

Shaffer Evaluation Group serves as the embedded developmental evaluator for the Commons for Justice (CfJ) initiative at Florida International University, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The project uses a collaboratory model that centers art, storytelling, and community voice to surface and address racial and ethnic inequities in disaster exposure and resilience across southeast Florida.

Art is at the core of CfJ’s engagement strategy. The initiative has produced multimedia exhibitions like Place and Purpose: Art Transformation in Coconut Grove, Under a Simple Tree, Climates of Inequality: Stories of Environmental Justice, I Am Little Haiti, and A Call to the Ancestors, all of which weave together visual arts, oral histories, poetry, and film to reflect lived experiences and spark community-driven dialogue. Public programming—Solution Sessions, History Exchanges, podcasts, and webinars—amplifies artist-led storytelling, placing creative practices at the heart of civic analysis and action.

SEG’s principal member is fully embedded in the CfJ team, gathering quarterly implementation data through site visits, interviews, event observations, documentation review, and social network analysis. Rather than traditional metrics, our summative evaluation tracks shifts in organizational cultures and partnerships, combining qualitative methods with neighborhood-level case studies.

Through this integrative arts approach, SEG helps illuminate how creative expression, collective narrative, and co-designed research can challenge systems of inequity and build resilience—amplifying local voices while modeling "local-to-global" collaborations rooted in justice.