This article explores collaborative social justice art education, community building, and activism through teacher workshops that utilized contemporary art to generate curriculum and dialogue. It models one possibility for professional development that casts teachers as learners in a supportive yet critical environment. It draws on critical analysis, linked with creative opportunity, as central to social justice art education and social change. The workshops utilize a platform comprised of three key considerations that are crucial for extending big ideas in curriculum toward social justice art education. This foundation provides teachers with specific issues to consider for developing both social justice art education curriculum and professional development as activism. Each of the following three concepts is most legible when considered as a separate plank that is also part of a larger platform: (1) Personal--how is the project grounded in the lived experience of participants?; (2) Critical--how has the power of political, socioeconomic, and cultural influences shaped the situation and why?; and (3) Activist--what creative opportunities for resistance are possible that could result in both personal and social change? Collective groups, focused on examining curriculum development through a contemporary social justice lens, can support agency and empower teachers to engage with issues in critically considered and newly productive ways.