Simply submit an application using the form within the Cook County or non-Cook County portal depending on your geographic location. Select the Envisioning Justice grant category you are interested in applying for: individual, organization, or organizational partnership.  You will be asked to describe who you are, what you plan to do, how you plan to carry it out, and how support from Illinois Humanities would help make it possible. If you’d like feedback in advance, we encourage you to contact us with questions or ideas no later than 2 weeks before the stated grant deadlines. We plan to notify applicants of funding decisions by Wednesday, October 20, 2021

Individuals, non-profit/tax-exempt organizations, and collectives seeking funding for projects addressing mass incarceration and/or various topics that bring forth possibilities for a more just society. This is intentionally open-ended as we understand the complexity of mass incarceration and the compounding issues that expand its reach and ongoing harm to marginalized communities. [CG1] For-profit entities are not eligible for these grants.

Grant opportunities are available for projects that take place in Illinois. Illinois Humanities is committed to equity in how funds are dispersed across the state, and geographic diversity will be a priority in our selection process.

Leading up to these 2021 grants, Illinois Humanities provided grants as part of the Envisioning Justice initiative in 2018 and 2020. It is possible that grants will be offered in 2022, but planning is still underway.

Yes, you can apply to more than one category. However, you can only be awarded one Envisioning Justice grant. Recipients of Community Grants, Activate History, and COVID-19 Emergency Relief and Recovery grants are eligible.

Illinois Humanities is overseeing this grants program, and an advisory committee consisting of staff and outside advisors from across Illinois has been assembled to assess applications.

The humanities are the examination of what it means to be human through the interpretation and discussion of all forms of thought, interest and expression. While we value traditional humanities disciplines, such as art history, literature, languages, law, history, and philosophy, our emphasis is on the public humanities, which means that we look at the humanities as more than an academic discipline.

For us, the public humanities are a mode of inquiry and conversation that aims to engage, support, or challenge the ideals, beliefs, tensions, and prejudices of the communities in which we live. We believe that important thought can happen outside of the academy – in neighborhood institutions, schools, churches, and at kitchen tables across the country. We are especially interested in instances of the public humanities that promote civic engagement – in raising critical issues facing everyday people and conducted with the hope of increasing their desire for staying engaged. Rather than being defined by rigid disciplinary boundaries, it is the humanistic lens, which emphasizes curiosity, questioning, and dialogue, that matters most to us.

Project Information

Go to the Body

Go to the Body is a feature film that follows the story of a young Black couple, Sanaa and Kendrick. After Sanaa, a rising community organizer, is sexually assaulted by a fellow activist, she must process her own pain and healing. At the same time, she must navigate the shifting relationship with her fiancé Kendrick as he struggles with allyship. Angelic and her colleagues will produce a proof of concept to showcase the film’s style and key themes. Additionally, they plan to partner with a local organization to host screenings with a discussion about sexual violence and mass incarceration in the Black community.

Grantee Information

Recipient: Angellic Ross, Chicago

About:
Born and raised in Milwaukee, Angellic Ross attended Northwestern University where she received her degree in Performance Studies, Minor in Film & Media Studies, and Certificate in Civic Engagement. In 2015, Angellic served as Miss Black Wisconsin USA where she utilized her platform to encourage young women of color to pursue careers in film. After graduating in 2016, She lived in Guatemala for one month producing revoLUZion, a documentary about a local non-profit called Los Patojos. revoLUZion won first place at the My Hero Festival in 2017. Angellic also produced a short narrative film, Down the Rabbit Hole, a drama which explores color-ism through the relationship of two friends; which was nominated for Best Picture in the Single Take Film Challenge. She currently works as a Strategy Media Planning Supervisor at an advertising agency. Outside of work, she works as a freelance film producer.

For more information about this project or the grantee, please contact Angellic Ross via email.

Project Information

Meet the Chicago 400: Lessons in the Carceral State

Chicago 400 Alliance will facilitate a webinar/video/oral history/drawing series on the harm of public conviction registries and housing banishment laws. They will use the Zoom webinar format as video and performance art—allowing them to represent in real time the lives of people experiencing homelessness on registries—while talking with corrections officials and other unlikely partners about the policies that make them homeless.

Partner artists will watch and illustrate the stories told by individuals (along with the webinar itself) to be used for exhibitions and social media and re edited into the webinar video, which will be distributed online and in exhibitions. Post-webinar reflection sessions and follow-up meetings will offer further dialogue and engagement.

Grantee Information

Recipient: Chicago 400 / Chicago 400 Alliance, Chicago

About:
We all want a justice system that makes the public safe, holds people accountable for harm, and allows them to move on with their lives. But our registry and banishment laws systematically displace, exclude, and reincarcerate people with past convictions, while failing to prevent victimization or support survivors, especially those with criminal records. As victim, housing, justice, and faith advocates, we see the life-shattering impact of violence. We also see how laws that lead to economic distress, homelessness, and isolation weaken the resilience of families and communities experiencing crime and incarceration. Our alliance is committed to transforming our state responses to violence and challenging our most extreme barriers to reentry.

For more information about this project or the grantee, please contact Laurie Jo Reynolds via email.

Project Information

Adding Faces to the Names – The Burge Survivors

Adding Faces to the Names – The Burge Survivors, is a portrait series created in an attempt to document and preserve the legacy of the individuals and also bring awareness and teach the public about the torture of more than 120 Black men and women from 1972 to 1991 by the Chicago Police Department under the direction of former Police Commander Jon Burge. These portraits are intended to honor the decades-long struggle for justice, as well as the survivors, families, and communities targeted by Burge and his midnight crew.

Grantee Information

Recipient: Daris Jasper, Chicago

About:
Daris Jasper of Culture Saving is an art director who has a deep fascination with storytelling, sociocultural anthropology, branding, and market research; and has developed throughout his career a unique approach to assisting top executives of arts organizations and cultural institutions with defining and shaping the way they communicate with their audiences.

Daris’s commitment to community and the arts has guided him on a path to giving back to youth throughout Chicago while working and supporting leading arts-focused organizations such as the Common Ground Foundation, Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, N’Namdi Contemporary, and the Chicago Park District.

For more information about this project or the grantee, please contact Daris Jasper via email.

Project Information

Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center Residency

Fifth House Ensemble requests support for mindfulness and music composition residency activities with two strands at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center: year round, weekly classroom visits to the Nancy B. Jefferson Alternative School and a collaboration with Storycatchers Theatre’s year-long residency program. Evaluated through a process developed in partnership with Loyola University Center for Urban Research and Learning, activities impact participants’ personal agency, empowerment, collective decision making, and creativity through the creation of compositions rooted in their own personal narratives. Residencies culminate in performances that bring participants’ works and experiences to a broader public and include opportunities for invited guests to tour the facility and participate in residency activities.

Grantee Information

Recipient: Fifth House Ensemble, Chicago

About:
Fifth House Ensemble taps the collaborative spirit of chamber music to create engaging performances and interactive educational programs, forging meaningful partnerships with unexpected venues, artists of other disciplines, educational institutions, and audiences of every type. Fifth House Ensemble accomplishes its mission through a commitment to the following core values:

Performing at the highest artistic level through connective programming, dramatic interpretation and creative energy.

Verbally and musically communicating with our audience, allowing each performance to connect in unexpected, thought-provoking and deeply personal ways.

Upholding and revitalizing the chamber music repertoire through the performance of honored classics, undiscovered works and new music from both renowned and emerging living composers.

Developing young audiences through curriculum-integrated educational programs that encourage active listening.

Promoting musical innovation and entrepreneurship through higher-education training programs for the next generation of performers.

For more information about this project or the grantee, please contact Parker Nelson via email.

Project Information

Exploring the experiences of formerly incarcerated community college students

This project seeks to explore the experiences of formerly incarcerated college students currently enrolled in a Chicago community college through Participatory Action (PAR) research.  10-15 students will research a topic related to education and incarceration, and lead events to share their findings and recommendations. In addition, a second research study will be conducted to determine the impact of PAR’s usefulness in transforming educational policy and more successful outcomes for formerly incarcerated college-going students.  PAR, specifically students investigating their own school experiences utilizing methods from the humanities and social sciences, has been shown to improve outcomes for marginalized students.

Grantee Information

Recipient: Harold Washington College, Chicago

About:
Harold Washington College is a community college part of the City Colleges of Chicago system. It is located in the downtown “Loop” area of the City, near the series of parks along the lakefront of Lake Michigan.

Asif Wilson, the project director for this Envisioning Justice grant, is the Associate Dean of Instruction at Harold Washington College. While he directly supports the general instructional operations of the college, he also supports tutoring, dual credit and dual enrollment, first year experience courses, developmental education, and community outreach.

For more information about this project or the grantee, please contact Asif Wilson via email.

Project Information

Downstate Convening on Higher Education in Prison

The Downstate Convening on Higher Education in Prison is a first-time gathering of educators, artists, activists, and humanists designed to build community and foster development of educational programs in Illinois prisons. Several IL-CHEP members have established track records of delivering education in prisons. IL-CHEP is now in the position to share lessons and support people across Illinois, particularly where prison programs are scarce. The convening is a multi-day engagement with stakeholders located near state prisons throughout southern Illinois. Using Zoom, IL-CHEP will introduce work from northern state prisons and offer breakout sessions focused on building programs in southern Illinois prisons.

Grantee Information

Recipient: Illinois Coalition for Higher Education in Prison (IL-CHEP), Chicago

About:
The Illinois Coalition for Higher Education in Prison (IL-CHEP) is a coalition of educators, students, activists, universities, and others committed to bringing quality higher education to Illinois prisons and jails and working toward a safer, more just society. Founded in 2016, we operate with the knowledge that higher education programs are among the best ways to offer opportunities and hope to individuals who are incarcerated. Such programs also help all of us imagine alternatives to our current system of mass incarceration.

For more information about this project or the grantee, please contact Flor Esquivel via email.

Project Information

Letters to Lost Loved Ones

Letters to Loved Ones is a documentary project meant to serve as a meditation on grief at a time when there are hundreds of people dying within prisons and jails across the country and hundreds of thousands of people have also died due to Covid-19. The documentary will utilize the letter format as it’s primary aesthetic and narrative form, using scans of the letters written by incarcerated peoples and loved ones, and readings of the letters performed by artists and activists within the community of prison abolitionists. The documentary will also include the FOIA requested redacted and documents amassed and archived over the past five years by the Illinois Deaths In Custody Project. The mission of this documentary project is to privilege the archive which excludes and erases the personal, by highlighting the human voice, the tactile experience of letter writing, the materiality of letters, the humanity of those who have written us so dearly, and bring more empathy and connection with incarcerated peoples.

Grantee Information

Recipient: Jose Luis Benavides, Chicago

About:
Jose Luis Benavides (b. 1986 Chicago, IL) is an artist, writer and educator. He has worked as a teaching artist with the National Museum of Mexican Art, Young Chicago Authors, Chicago Arts Partnership in Education and the Chicago Public Library. He has also taught within the Cook County jail system and he is an active project manager with the Illinois Deaths in Custody Project. He has presented about his work at the Art Institute of Chicago’s Block Party (2018); and the Chicago Archives + Artists Festival (2018); American Studies Association conference (2018); and for Mutual Interpretations at the University of Illinois at Chicago (2017).

For more information about this project or the grantee, please contact Jose Luis Benavides via email.

Project Information

Illustrating a Better Way: Art & Animation on the Failure of Deterrence and Need for Community Approaches to Public Safety

Numerous studies have discredited “tough-on-crime” policing and sentencing policies and proven that investment in community-based mental-health, educational, and social programs is much more effective in reducing crime. Unfortunately, however, these academic studies have remained inaccessible to the general public. Illustrating a Better Way will use creative and visually engaging mediums, including infographics and animation, to make the findings of these studies vivid and comprehensible to the general public. By helping people to understand the actual impact of tough-on-crime policies, it will help to mobilize broad public support for policy-changes that shift resources from policing and punitiveness to community welfare.

Grantee Information

Recipient: Joseph Dole, Joliet

About:
Joseph Dole is an artist, writer, journalist, jailhouse lawyer, and government watchdog. Incarcerated since 1998, he spent nearly a decade of his life in complete isolation at the notorious Tamms Supermax Prison, before intense pressure led to its closure in 2012. Joe is currently serving life without parole and continues to fight his conviction pro se. He has recently uncovered evidence suppressed by the State.

Joe has written numerous articles, essays, poems, and research papers. Two of his policy proposals were catalysts for Illinois legislation. He has won four PEN America Writing Awards for Prisoners, was selected by Eula Biss as the winner of the 2016 Columbia Journal Winter Contest, and has published two books. His artwork has been exhibited throughout the country and he recently earned his bachelor’s degree, with a depth area in critical carceral-legal studies, through Northeastern Illinois University’s University Without Walls program. Joe is currently incarcerated at Stateville Prison; we spoke by phone.

For more information about this project or the grantee, please contact Joseph Dole via email.

Project Information

Insights/Outsides: Freestyle Freedom (working title)

What does collective freedom look, sound, and feel like? This question and its political stakes will guide this collaborative video project with Circles & Ciphers, a hip hop based restorative justice organization  in Rogers Park working with a diverse group of community members to address how the industrial prison complex is impacting their lives. Through a series of three gatherings outdoors they will develop lyrics, poetry, and individual raps that address the theme of the project.

The performances of the songs by each individual will be documented on video and the audio will also be separately recorded at Circles & Ciphers own sound studio, Kaba Studios.

The video documentation of the three gatherings will be edited into a documentary sequence that will be accompanied by the vinyl record that will mix  the recordings from community members with recording by currently incarcerated individuals.

This project aims to facilitate and foster forms of self-expression, through rhyme, dance, sound and music and invites the community of young people that is part of Circles & Ciphers to come together and respond to the notion of collective freedom based on their personal perspectives.

Grantee Information

Recipient: Kirsten Leenaars, Chicago

About:
Kirsten Leenaars (NL) is an interdisciplinary video artist based in Chicago. Various forms of performance, theater, and documentary strategies make up the threads that run through her work. She engages with individuals and communities to create participatory video and performance work. Her work oscillates between fiction and documentation, reinterprets personal stories and reimagines everyday realities through shared authorship, staging and improvisation. Leenaars examines through her work how we relate to others and explores how through the production of the work itself new forms of relating can be created.

For more information about this project or the grantee, please contact Kirsten Leenaars via email.

Project Information

Steps to Endeavor

Steps to Endeavor will explore the impact of incarceration on Black Women and girls.  Lavon will utilize her creative voice and artistic expression to provide a personal narrative on her experience as a teenage gang member, the criminalization of herself and the girls she ran with by local authorities, her incarceration, and the inequality she experienced in the judicial system.  Lavon will also explore with field research from the Women she grew with how a youth engagement program redirected their behaviors using creativity and dance technique, and becoming a Women.

Grantee Information

Recipient: Lavon Nicole Pettis, Chicago

About:
Lavon Nicole Pettis is a Creative Business Development Specialist who blends her background of Psychology and Sociology into the world of creative professionals such as fine artists, writers, actors, cultural artists, and musicians with all of the business acumen of a comprehensive fine arts company.

Lavon firmly believes that fine artists deserve the same support that agents and managers provide to other artistic endeavors. She recognizes that most professional artists struggle to reach a balance between creative integrity and self-promotion. It is her goal to make inroads into presenting an artist to a gallery, critic and/or collector while also encouraging a community to take note of the artist’s work. She is an effective promoter of music, storytelling, cultural arts and is not limited in her extensive expertise of providing support to other genres such as education and community outreach.

She has applied a strategic acumen to promote an artist’s career by developing an extensive network of contemporary art collectors and professionals. Performing artists are afforded a finely-tuned aesthetic and she is at home whether it is behind the stage,or encouraging a lover of art to factor in for financial support of a play or an art exhibition.

Lavon has collaborated with the following artists to present programs and spotlight their work: ​John “Poppy” Wright, Robert “Bobby” Sengstacke, Kelan Phil Cohran, Oba William King, Augustine Lehmann, Donnie R. Carter, and the Queen of Green Chef Lauren Von Der Pool.

For more information about this project or the grantee, please contact Lavon Nicole Pettis via email.

Project Information

Stories for Freedom: Preparing and Sharing Testimony of People Impacted by Extreme Sentencing

Stories for Freedom will extend this crucial uplifting of impacted people’s voices by training, documenting, and bringing to a wider audience the stories of people directly impacted by life sentences. Parole Illinois will use their public meetings and newsletters to identify approximately 10 additional impacted people from key districts who would like to develop their speaking and leadership skills. They will also hire an organizer to work directly with these people.The organizer will lead training sessions for these individuals. Parole Illinois will also organize press conferences, public meetings, and meetings with policymakers, where trainees can assist with outreach and present their testimony. Lastl, Parole Illinois will prepare video of the testimony to show at community events across the state.

Stories for Freedom has several aims. First, it will contribute to the perceptual shifts that are necessary for successful policy changes around extreme sentencing. Second, it will empower impacted people to participate effectively in public life. Third, it will deepen Parole Illinois’ work in building networks of solidarity among people with life sentences, their loved ones, and allies among youth, senior citizens, and diverse social-justice advocates.

Grantee Information

Recipient: Parole Illinois, Chicago

About:
Parole Illinois aims to change the perceptions, policies, and power relations that have maintained mass incarceration and extreme-sentencing in our state. We pursue these aims by bringing incarcerated voices into prison-policy discussions, training impacted people to share their stories and lead mobilization efforts, and educating the public and policymakers about the harms of extreme sentencing and the need for policies that give every incarcerated person in the state  a fair chance to return home.

For more information about this project or the grantee, please contact Shari Stone-Mediatore via email.

Project Information

The 51st (Free) State

The 51st (Free) State addresses the scale and impact of mass incarceration by imagining the 2.2 million people currently incarcerated in the US as an independent nation. Through the creation of anthems, flags, songs, and movement pieces that will be projected in public spaces throughout Chicago, incarcerated PNAP students can share their lives and experiences at a time when they are more isolated than ever.

Grantee Information

Recipient: Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project, Chicago

About:
The mission of the Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project is to build relationships of reciprocity that bring artists, scholars, and writers together with incarcerated people and our communities. We believe that access to education and art is a fundamental human right with the capacity to transform people, systems, and futures.

For more information about this project or the grantee, please contact Sarah Ross via email.

Project Information

Testimony and Transformation: Telling a New Story About Mass Incarceration

Testimony and Transformation is three-fold by design. First, The Voices and Faces Project will conduct a two-day testimonial writing workshop for up to 20 formerly incarcerated men who are potential leaders in their communities. A second phase of the program will involve two follow-up day-long sessions, conducted in virtual synchronous learning sessions, to help participants advance stories generated in the workshop. And a third phase of the program will be an on and offline media engagement strategy — centered by a virtual publication of the participants’ stories, which may have a special audio component— that will help us educate the broader public on the root causes of mass incarceration and the challenges faced by returning citizens.

Grantee Information

Recipient: The Voices and Faces Project, Chicago

About:
The Voices and Faces Project is an award-winning non-profit storytelling initiative created to bring the names, faces, and testimonies of survivors of gender-based violence to the attention of the public. Through our educational and advocacy trainings, our survivor story archives (housed at The Voices and Faces Project and World Without Exploitation), and our signature program, The Stories We Tell – an immersive, two-day testimonial writing workshop for survivors of sexual violence, intimate partner violence, and trafficking – we seek to change minds, hearts, and public policies through the power of personal testimony.

For more information about this project or the grantee, please contact Anne Ream via email.

Project Information

Reimagining Mass Incarceration Series

A Gift of Love Charity will have at least four individuals share their experiences with mass incarceration and create a small art piece afterward as a form of healing. They will use this to create a documentary that will debut on their YouTube account and through a virtual community showing in partnership with Carbondale Public Library. The documentary and attendant program are meant to provide an opportunity for community members to come together and begin the discussion relating to mass incarceration.

Grantee Information

Recipient: A Gift of Love Charity, Carbondale

About:
A Gift of Love Charity, Inc.’s mission is to provide arts, education, and agricultural programs without financial or displacement boundaries placed upon these services. The vision of the organization is to educate the community so they gain knowledge of the arts, education and agricultural programs and this allows them to see a future for themselves far beyond what they could imagine.

For more information about this project or the grantee, please contact Chastity Mays via email.

Project Information

Art from the Heart

Art from the heart would allow children in Decatur Illinois a safe space to learn about the arts be creative and become a support system within the Bimonthly meetings Learning and being around other children inthe community who had similar experiences as them also art from the heart will encourage fine motor and gross motor skills by utilizing different mediums of art to teach them how to healthy express themselves and form a community-based center where the children are allowed to open discussions about their parent/level one that may be incarcerated knowing that they are not Alone in those life experiences while being able to send the art to the parent/loved one who is incarcerated.

Grantee Information

Recipient: Art from the Heart, Bloomington

About:
To allow children in a safe space to learn about the arts be creative and develop a support system with other children that have been through similar life experiences.Also to allow an open communication with the parents/loved one who is incarcerated and be able to send that in The mail to them.

For more information about this project or the grantee, please contact Heather Canuel via email.

Project Information

The Mentorship Project

The Carbondale Public Library and Carbondale United will provide training to six African American men to become volunteer youth mentors and violence interrupters. Once trained, the men will meet with Carbondale and southern Illinois youth for interactive relationship-building programs. They’ll become a resource to the youth, sharing nonviolent conflict resolution techniques. With gun violence on the rise in southern Illinois we feel an urgent need to develop robust violence prevention initiatives that center impacted individuals and bypass patterns of mass incarceration. We see this as a step toward the implementation of a violence interruption program in our region.

Grantee Information

Recipient: Carbondale Public Library, Carbondale

About:
Carbondale Public Library provides resources and services to support the educational, informational, cultural, and recreational needs of its community.

For more information about this project or the grantee, please contact Diana Sussman via email.

Project Information

Autarchia (working title)

Autarchia is an online video series exploring a utopian future for Carbondale, IL. It is written, produced, and performed by local residents. Set in a near future when Carbondale, IL has abolished police, prisons, and the market economy, the series takes us through the day to day life, struggles, and dreams of Carbondale communards. Autarchia is an experiment in creative, community-based approach to envisioning social transformation. Members of the community will use the fictional universe of Autarchia to answer the questions Carbondale of today faces in a work of public art that will challenge and transform our collective imagination.

Grantee Information

Recipient: Carbondale Spring, Carbondale

About:
The Carbondale Spring is a grassroots project to transform Carbondale into a model city tackling the social, ecological, and economic challenges of our time. Our aim is to transform the local imagination surrounding harm and public safety, challenging institutions of oppression while building community-controlled projects that directly serve the people.

In February 2019, the Carbondale Spring began with a vision to reduce the Carbondale Police Department budget by half, redistributing those funds to four initiatives to create a more compassionate city and prepare for the challenges posed by climate change. Since that time, we have set about building pilot projects on all of our community initiatives, creating the skeleton of a sustainable city that would provide people with their basic needs and meet them with compassion in times of crisis. Since the start of our project, we’ve partnered with many local groups on everything from growing gardens to building chicken coops to installing solar panels to transforming a local bakery into a collaborative community kitchen. By 2024, we expect our vision for the town to have become common sense, having irreversibly shifted Carbondale’s direction of development.

For more information about this project or the grantee, please contact Nicholas Smaligo via email.

Project Information

Aiming for Peace in 217

Aiming for Peace in 217 will produce a series of graphic arts, videos, billboards and social media pieces highlighting the impact of mass incarceration in Champaign Countyw. Using the stories of impacted individuals, we will depict the structural racism in our criminal legal system, a system where more than 50% of those in jail are Black in a county with only a 13% Black population. Our work will also draw attention to efforts by people in the community to resist the expansion of the jail and to advance the interests of individuals with felony convictions.

Grantee Information

Recipient: FirstFollowers, Urbana

About:
First Followers’ mission is to build strong and peaceful communities by providing support, guidance, and hope to formerly incarcerated people and their loved ones through peer mentorship.

For more information about this project or the grantee, please contact Marlon Mitchell via email.

Project Information

Expression Connections

Expression Connection would provide a creative outlet for individuals incarcerated at Knox County Jail, Henry Hill Correctional Center, and those at Mary Davis Detention Home and their families to express themselves using art, storytelling, poetry, and literature. The Art Center hopes, that through art, a connection can be made by the community at large to those affected by mass incarceration, and that connection can help educate our community about the prison industrial complex and how we have all been affected.

Grantee Information

Recipient: Galesburg Civic Art Center, Galesburg

About:
The Galesburg Civic Art Center connects our community to visual art through exhibitions, arts education programming, and experiences.

For more information about this project or the grantee, please contact Tuesday Cetin via email.

Project Information

Creation of a Restorative Justice Hub in Decatur, IL

Youth and young adults in Decatur, IL need viable solutions for reducing violence, promoting healing, fostering healthy restorative dialog, and promoting community reentry support to decrease court involvement and reduce mass incarceration. Decatur has no centralized restorative justice hub (RJ Hub) or training location for students, families, teachers, social workers, practitioners, attorneys, judges, law enforcement, or elected officials. This perpetuates researchers’ concerns about RJ fidelity (or lack thereof) in current restorative justice training in schools, courts, and communities to reduce mass incarceration. The new RJ Hub will assist in research, development, training, and policy advocacy in Decatur, IL.

Grantee Information

Recipient: Global Restorative Justice Partnership, Decatur

About:
Global Restorative Justice Partnership creates safe and healthy community spaces where youth, individuals, and families experience belonging, opportunity, and positive transformation.

For more information about this project or the grantee, please contact Keyria Rodgers via email.

Project Information

Project Read Plus

Project Read Plus provides tutoring for Macon County Jail inmates who are in RESTORE, a substance abuse recovery program. Participants improve reading and math skills through direct instruction and through STEAM, a project-based approach that includes art activities. Exercises develop creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving as well as encourage students to work together, communicate effectively, resolve conflict, follow directions, and pay attention to detail. Activities also result in increased patience, initiative, persistence, confidence, and self-worth-all characteristics that may facilitate recovery and are skills that help secure employment after release. We also hope to learn how RESTORE can decrease recidivism.

Grantee Information

Recipient: Project Read Plus, Decatur

About:
Project Read Plus helps adults improve their reading and math skills through individualized tutoring.

For more information about this project or the grantee, please contact Julie Pangrac via email.

Project Information

Shakespeare Corrected

The American prison system has neglected justice and rehabilitation. Shakespeare Corrected is a theatre company based out of Millikin University’s School of the Arts that works to reverse this trend through transformative artistic experience. Now in its tenth year, the company creates an annual nine-month program during which ten undergraduate students work directly with 30 women of the Decatur Correctional Center to produce a Shakespeare production. This experience gives students and inmates new tools to relate to their environments and successfully reintegrate into society.

Grantee Information

Recipient: Shakespeare Corrected, Decatur

About:
Shakespeare Corrected aims to bring undergraduate students together with marginalized populations to create an artistic experience that creates an atmosphere of respectful inclusion and supported expression.

For more information about this project or the grantee, please contact Alex Miller via email.

Project Information

Community Conversations – Systemic Racism & Mass Incarceration

Community Conversations is an initiative that was started in 2020, to allow individuals throughout Southern Illinois to have conversations on topics that are sometimes hard, sometimes uncomfortable, but more than anything they are needed to help us understand the challenges that our family, friends and neighbors are facing. Our conversations are video taped and then we release the discussion on one topic each week. What we have already learned is that there is real power in an open and respectful discussion. Our goal is for more people to see these discussions and prompt their own conversations.

Grantee Information

Recipient: Southern Illinois Community Foundation, Marion

About:
Southern Illinois Community Foundation engages the people of southern Illinois in building a tradition of philanthropy. The Southern Illinois Community Foundation is committed to creating an opportunity for donors to participate in local community development efforts to address the changing needs of our community through charitable giving.

For more information about this project or the grantee, please contact Byram Fager via email.

Project Information

RENEW Her (REstoring the Narrative of Every Women back to Her)

“ReNEW Her inspires healing, restoration, and empowerment that bring light to their experiences, with love and support that heals. We utilize evidence-based methods and healing-centered activities combined with art to help girls develop a positive identity at home, school, and in their community.

The Well Experience accepts referrals for Black Girls who have been identified as needing intervention and support that focus on prevention. Specifically, girls, who have been suspended from school, had involvement with the Juvenile Detention Center, are under court supervision, have poor school attendance, are runaways, etc.

Grantee Information

Recipient: The Well Experience, Urbana

About:
The Well Experience supports the holistic growth, healing, resiliency, empowerment, restoration, and physical and mental health of minority women, girls, and teens in every community we serve, by providing resources, education, empowering activities that focus on building strengths, and helping women, girls, and teens develop the tools and skills they need to be their best selves. To do our part in making the world a better place for all by building productive relationships with families, volunteers, community leaders, and organizations while making a positive impact on all our pursuits.

For more information about this project or the grantee, please contact Stephanie Cockrell via email.

Project Information

WIN Recovery’s Decarceration Project

WIN Another Chance Decarceration Project will help reduce the number of incarcerated women in the State of Illinois. This project promotes multiple ways of transforming the criminal justice system’s infrastructure that will develop alternatives to incarceration, decareration, and formerly incarcerated women’s leadership development.

The WIN Recovery Decarceration Project provides gender-responsive, health-promoting services for women as an alternative to incarceration and/or upon reentry. Supports include service navigation and resources to meet individualized, self-identified needs that may include housing, physical/mental/emotional health care services, substance misuse/trauma recovery, education, employment, and family therapy/reunification.With an overarching goal of eliminating the incarceration of women and reducing recidivism rates of those exiting prison, WIN Recovery provides housing in tandem with gender-responsive, health-promoting services, and support to identify, access, and navigate resources to meet individualized, self-identified goals of formerly incarcerated women.

For women to effectively sustain ties and transition back into society, the core of each woman’s trauma must be identified and addressed. Our hope is to stop the trauma-to-prison pipeline and help women heal from the pain that led to their involvement with the criminal justice system.

Grantee Information

Recipient: WIN Recovery, Champaign

About:
Women in Need (WIN) Recovery provides – and advocates for -alternatives to incarceration as well as safe housing for formerly incarcerated women in rural Illinois while equipping them with vital life skills to transform their lives and rejoin the community as productive members.

For more information about this project or the grantee, please contact Bethany Little via email.

• A Gift of Love Charity (Carbondale)
• Parole Illinois (for dialogues to take place in Bloomington and Galesburg).