Elgin Bokari

“I believe in a world without prisons.“

Elgin Bokari is an artist, activist, creator, and organizer. After over a decade of teaching art classes inside juvenile detention centers, he founded Stomping Grounds Literary Arts Initiative with the goal of fostering the creativity of young people, most especially that of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated youth. One important distinction to note is that Elgin and all of the organizations he’s worked with are not employees of the state or the carceral system. They are outside organizations serving the young people inside these prisons.

Prisons, in their most obvious sense, are about confinement. But what may not be readily apparent when you have never had to engage with the carceral system, is that this confinement isn’t just physical, but also mental and emotional. People inside prisons are not allowed access to the internet and certain books. On top of that, the processes of checking into the building, and the very architecture of the space can cause anxiety and depression as people are cut off from the outside world and forced to exist in concrete boxes. When students arrive in Elgin’s classes, some haven’t stepped foot on grass or held a regular pencil in their hands in years.

“Youth is a word that means constantly growing.”

Read an audio transcript

I help to cultivate incubator spaces with young people and then spaces that are in housed facilities, teaching workshops ranging from visual arts, creative writing, audio production, training as well to for audio and sound, and a lot of recording. And also produce a lot of music and a lot of poems in collaboration with the young people we work with. A lot of them already have fantastic ideas of work, I just work with them to have it be presented out to the community so the community can know that these are still youth.

There’s a difference between saying young people, or kids. Youth is a word that means constantly growing. And I believe the more that our communities know that the young people that are housed within this place are still youth, and have either made mistakes or did things that they regret, they’re still learning and growing. And if they do have the opportunity to see a pathway to freedom from these oppressive environments, my class is one of the few places where they can express themselves freely. And I think it’s extremely important to be very cautious with how to foster that growth in a healthy way. You know, so a lot of building of confidence goes on in the classroom.

Certainly.

A lot of checking in.

Mm hm.

And daily times of success.

As a teaching artist, it’s Elgin’s job to set aside his emotions to make space for his students’ emotions. Every day they check in on how everyone is doing, from 1 to 10. Given the oppressive structures in prisons, admitting that you’re not doing well can get someone in trouble with the guards. But in Stomping Grounds classes, these young people are allowed to admit that they’re not doing well, and that’s ok. It is not something that can result in punishment.

Just today, a young person came to my class feeling a three, and I said, ‘oh ok, cool.’ And he looked at me and he was like, “cool? What you mean cool?” And like for me, oh no that’s a check- I can see later on if that goes better.

And that same young person, after we checked in he was like, “yo, you talked to my OG, you talked to my mom, actually, last week.” And I was like, “yeah I did! She’s a wonderful lady. Yeah, you’re so close to finishing your song, I thought it would be great if we connect with your mom so that she would be able to approve that song.”

Immediately after getting our assignment for us to write today- he actually wrote some really great stuff for free write- and then he actually finished his song today, which was a love letter to his partner, to his girlfriend. And now that song’s gonna be shared out and gonna be mixed down next week. So he came in feeling a three, left feeling about an eight. So, that’s like a day of success.

Elgin’s partially exposed scientific chromatogram. As Elgin checks in with his students about their mental health, scientific chromatograms are a way of checking in on the health of the land. The colors of shapes in this chromatogram will change and deepen as it is further exposed to sunlight.

Art is about humanity- seeing the humanity in others and connecting with your own. In this sense, it is the antithesis of the carceral system. Making space for basic human expression is vital, especially in places like prisons where any expression can cause those in power to lash out. And especially for children whose brains are growing and sense of self developing.

Art classes allow these young folks to envision a life for themselves outside of metal bars and wire-enforced windows. Classes also help give them valuable skills, from emotional expression and regulation to audio production and writing. Once free, students like Cassius have gone on to release singles, helping them financially support themselves.

The best way to achieve this is to cultivate a safe space for human expression. When students and even guards enter Elgin’s classrooms, they visibly relax. Art is on the walls. Audio production equipment and drawing tablets are visible. Students get to use real pencils instead of golf pencils. Because of this, in his 15 years of teaching, Elgin has never had a fight break out in one of his classrooms.

“Let me just be very clear that it’s not my job to beautify the jail. There’s nothing pretty about this place at all. I love the work that I do. I hate the place that I do it in. But I understand the context of why it’s important to do the work that we do and the relationship that we have with the space in order to be able to positively affect the young people that we work with.”

Though you can put as much art up on the walls as possible and make as much emotional space for the young people to experience their own emotions, the fact does not change that they are still locked up, cut off from loved ones and the natural world while forced to navigate the complex carceral system. Art can help you survive a system that is constantly suppressing your humanity, but it cannot magically fix everything or suddenly make prisons nurturing places. Inside, the youths’ only contact with the earth may be with the bricks that make up some of the walls- a material so changed that its origin as earth can feel lost. The field the youth sometimes are allowed to access is paved- not grass or dirt, let alone prairie. This is why a number of the poems the young people have written reference rain.

“I’ve been up in their yard. It’s just a big, open field. And it’s a field with no grass. It’s concrete. Big open space with a couple of basketball courts up there for like a field day activity. So then what are you gonna talk about? The sun? You either talk about the sun or the rain.”

Aside from too little time in the concrete yard, young people can get a glimpse of the outside when they are able to look out of the front windows of the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center. Windows are often seen as portals, and this can be especially true in prisons, “Last week I came in, somebody was banging on a window, trying to talk to someone downstairs.” These same windows that they use for communication also let them glimpse the occasional protestors who rally outside. They also look out onto a strip of grass next to the detention center’s parking garage, where trees are interspersed with surveillance devices atop posts.

At the base of the first tree that the youth can see from their windows, Elgin poured a Yoruba-inspired water offering to the spirit of creativity that has lived in the souls of the young people and their arts teachers. It is also here that we collected soil for our chromatograms.

This is near where I think freedom probably would really hit a young person. When I went in this morning, I saw a kid leaving from the line scan, like coming out. I think he just got released and he was like, “fuck finally,” ya know what I mean.

And so I think when they get over towards this grass is that is like the realization that I’m free. So I wonder how many freedoms this particular land and grass that we’re sitting on right now have experienced.

Because it’s only two types of things- they’ve either experienced freedom or they’ve experienced sorrow. One or the other. It’s either somebody coming in to work with the young people. Someone leaving, exhausted from being in these spaces. Some parent coming in from probably a long distance to come and visit a child that they have, they love, in a space for a very short amount of time and hoping that they could see that young person. Went through the full check in process, probably travelled 30 minutes to an hour to get here, only to find out that they probably can’t see their kids, and so the disappointment that happens amongst that. So like these are things that could happen.

And then the joy that this grass and land might feel when someone is finally able to go home. So it’s going to be interesting to see the mixed bag of what this land particularly experiences: the hope, the despair, the exhaustion, and then maybe the freedom.

Elgin’s artistic chromatogram. As a partially exposed print, the colors will change and deepen as it is exposed to sunlight.

Exhibition

From October 5 – November 15, 2025, Elgin’s story and original chromatograms are on display in the windows of the North Austin Branch of the Chicago Public Library as part of the Terrain Biennial. During this time, Elgin’s pieces will finish developing from the lighter colors in the above pictures to prints with more depth and detail.

While his scientific chromatogram is more than halfway developed, I did not unfold and wet mount his artistic chromatogram until the night before installation so that it can undergo as dramatic a color change as possible while on display. This way, library patrons and staff can see how their sunlight effects Elgin’s story.

The Chicago neighborhood of Austin is just east of the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center. And like the youth incarcerated in JTDC, Austin and its residents are often discounted. Yet their humanity shines, and they deserve more access to the arts.