The Hopeful Justice Collective

Restoke has been partnering with researchers, artists and organisations from across the UK in a social movement exploring Transformative Justice as a way to reintegrate women with convictions into their communities. Funded by the Nuffield Foundation & The British Academy. We have been working with local community leaders, activists, creatives, and anyone with an interest in new ideas of justice and supporting people in their community in a series of workshops which has led to the formation of a new group - The Hopeful Justice Collective

The Hopeful Justice Collective are holding a series of monthly creative workshops in 2024 to explore Transformative Justice: a strategy for responding to harm and violence without creating further harm. The Collective has emerged as part of a two-year research project exploring the potential of Transformative Justice to make communities stronger, more equal, and more connected.


We are a Collective for the people of Stoke to imagine justice and liberation together through creative practice. We place transformation of our everyday practices, our communities, and our world at the centre of what we do.


In the 2024 workshops, we will use arts practices to engage with areas such as building stronger community relationships, practicing accountability, understanding and responding to harm, experimenting with strategies for de-escalating, and collectively imagining what a more just Stoke would look like. The workshops will use a combination of visual art, creative writing, performance making, and film to explore these ideas in practice and imagine different futures together.

We will also be joined for guest skills sharing sessions run by Staffordshire Women’s Aid, Rideout Creative Arts for Rehabilitation, and Restoke.


These sessions build on workshops delivered in 2023 but we are welcoming new and returning participants for the next set of workshops. You can listen to the soundworks the Hopeful Justice Collective produced last year here: https://www.hopefuljusticecollective.co.uk/

You do not need to have any experience in theatre or justice, just an interest in thinking about how we can work collectively to build a more just and equal society. Of course, anyone with existing experience in these areas is very welcome! We can provide with access support and childcare for the workshops, just let us know what you might need to be involved and we will help wherever we can.

Workshops are Saturdays 2-5pm followed by a shared meal - 20th Jan, 10th Feb, 2nd March, 23rd March, 13th April, 11th May, 25th May, 15th June

To register your interest email info@restoke.org.uk



Transformative Justice is:

  • Built on the premise that top down and state responses to violence reproduce harm 

  • Focuses on overcoming ingrained social and structural barriers to engagement and justice issues

  • Cultivates accountability, healing, resilience, and safety by transforming the conditions that enable harm

  • Develops community accountability and engagement to challenge unequal and intersecting power relationships​

  • Promotes a bottom-up understanding of the lives and needs of populations.