The Spaces We Activate: A Conversation with Tyreece Williams

Because that gets us closer toward building that collective vision, right? Like what a truly just society looks like when we work together rather than if we're all doing everything separately.

And I think over time, the conversations that Illinois Humanities has held space for has expanded from what we've learned from our community partners and the people that have been in this work for a long time. It's not that we should be focusing necessarily on “how do we put less people in jail,” but we should be focusing on “how do we create the conditions in our communities so that this isn't happening—and what do those conditions look like.” In my opinion, that reframe opens up so many possibilities that the arts and humanities can help us realize. 

HK: Something that I really love is RE:ACTION, and that, to me, seems like such a beautiful endeavor to be in conversation with each other. Artists, humanists, and organizers produced prompts for truly anyone to engage with this work, regardless of their personal skill level—and RE:ACTION opened up a digital space where learners can upload the art they created in response, and see what other people have done, too.

TW: The prompts speak to what the ethos of Envisioning Justice is. It's using activities that engage folks with the arts and humanities, to invite some questions, some conversations, some ideation, creation, whatever it is. You know, there are levels to it, right? Because we kind of have to do our own individual reflection sometimes. Sometimes we need to sit with things, we need to process on our own; but then there's also something in having that exchange and hearing how someone else might have interpreted the same poem, how someone else might have interpreted the same article—and kind of seeing how you both see the world similarly, and the ways in which there might be some difference. 

I mean, it was after the height of uprising and people protesting, and it was in a period of the pandemic where people were just now starting to do things in person. It was just kind of a weird—or not “weird”—unfamiliar time where we were gathering a group of people who have been exhausted by all that has been happening in the world in the last two years. I mean—there's always been a lot happening—but with George Floyd and all the uprisings that followed, but then also people dying, predominantly people of color, during the start of the pandemic. And all of the organizing that a lot of these people were doing, and when I say organizing, I mean protests but then also mutual aid. So to be able to hold that space at that specific juncture, and be one of the first organizations in Illinois, to my knowledge, to host something like that at the time was really meaningful. I heard from a lot of folks how meaningful it was to be able to just be together for two days. 

Some people were specifically focused on incarcerated folks and how we increase higher education in prisons, other people are doing more like healing and restorative work with communities impacted by violence, there were some people who were specifically focused on “how do we support young people that have been impacted by the criminal legal system.” 

So everybody was holding so much at that time, and to be able to kind of silence all that noise for two days, I think it was really beautiful.  Well—it's not noise—but you know what I mean. I think it was really, really special.

HK: Why is it vital to do this work in Illinois? Are there any kind of state-specific gaps that Illinois Humanities is filling?

TW: I think when we talk about mass incarceration, a lot of folks think of that as predominantly a Chicago-based issue that doesn't really impact the rest of the state, but that's obviously not true, since a lot of our our facilities are in rural parts of the state, and a lot of people in rural parts of the state are employed by these facilities. So there are a lot of different relationships to the carceral state and the criminal legal system that exist within Illinois. 

A way for us to get to solutions or ideas that are inclusive and are actually sustainable is to consider all of those different relationships, hold space for all of them, and to reconcile all of them, right? So how do we reconcile the young person in Chicago whose dad went to prison, and they've also been in and out of youth facilities—how do we reconcile that experience with someone who lives in Decatur who has not been impacted at all, maybe, at least not in a very explicit way, but who knows it's an issue. Or someone who thinks that we should be locking more and more people up, who thinks that's how we keep our people safe, is more jails, more prisons, more police. How do we reconcile all of these different belief systems, how do we respectfully honor our differences, but also challenge us to look at ourselves critically? And look at not only ourselves, who we surround ourselves with. and the world around us.

There are state-wide organizations focused on issues related to mass incarceration, but there are few doing this through the lens of the arts and humanities. 

The resources Illinois Humanities has produced alongside artists, humanists, and community organizers in our state provide unique pathways for people to grapple with issues related to the criminal legal system. And to take it further, Illinois Humanities is also uniquely positioned to “activate” its resources—and resources created by its partners—by facilitating intentional spaces for curiosity and engagement. I think work like Envisioning Justice is just as critical as policy reform, community organizing, and decarceration efforts because it is oftentimes the arts and humanities that introduce and shape the principles that inform these other vital modes toward systemic change.