Our Work

At Planting Seeds Arts, we operate at the intersection of arts, education, and ecology drawing upon a rich tradition grounded in collective liberation. We embrace the interconnectedness of our world, and acknowledge the profound impact of systems on individuals and communities. Our work facilitates deeper understandings of human beings and our relationship to the built and natural world including, the choices that we make that shape our communities and society. Through the use of various arts modalities we create courses where play, exploration, problem-solving, and critical thinking blend seamlessly, opening up new possibilities for growth and transformation.

“Where life is precious, life is precious.”

Ruth Wilson Gilmore

Kim Wilson, Ph.D. is the founder of Planting Seeds Arts. She brings extensive experience in social justice organizing, public policy, education, and art to this initiative. Her work as producer and co-host of Beyond Prisons, a podcast on incarceration and prison abolition, focuses on shedding light on systemic injustices through the use of digital media and storytelling-journalism. The podcast’s recognition in academic and non-academic spaces, includes contributing to The Routledge International Handbook of Prison Abolition (2021), Mariame Kaba’s, We Do This ‘til We Free Us (Haymarket, 2021), Making Abolitionist Worlds: Proposals for a World on Fire (Common Notions, 2020), Abolishing Carceral Society (Common Notions2018), TruthOut, and Shadowproof.

In 2023, Kim stepped away from producing the podcast to focus on her ongoing recovery from spine surgery and Long-Covid. She has now fully recovered, and is ready to continue building.

Planting Seeds Arts emerged from her personal creative practice, which served as a lifeline during years of isolation and chronic pain, igniting her desire to share the transformative power of art-making as a catalyst for personal growth and social change.

A social scientist and educator by training, Dr. Wilson has more than twenty years of experience in higher education, and most recently taught Comparative Political and Social Theory, and Theories of Change for the Master of Arts in Social Justice and Community Organizing at Prescott College. In 2020, she taught courses at the Wallkill Correctional Facility through the Prison Education Program at New York University.

A talented artist, she was recently honored with the Leeway Foundation’s Transformation Award for her work on Beyond Prisons, and she was selected for a 2024 Buinho Artist Residency in Messejana, Portugal. Kim has participated in various group shows, but she is most proud of the series collaboration with her son, Paul, which was part of an exhibition at the University of New England galleries in 2021-2022. 

Dr. Wilson earned a Ph.D. in Urban Affairs and Public Policy from the University of Delaware, and a Master’s in Education in Adult and Organizational Development from Temple University, where she also earned a Bachelor’s in Business Administration. She has developed and delivered countless courses and training programs.

She is co-editor, along with Maya Schenwar, of a forthcoming anthology published by Haymarket Books, that explores a diverse range of experiences with parenting and care-work from abolitionist perspectives.