Dark Matters: Youth Workshop

June 15 and 22, 2021
4:30–6 pm
Free and open to youth ages 12–21. The workshop is limited to ten participants.
To register, email jbwc@justbuffalo.org

How does your relationship with Artificial Intelligence like Siri and Alexa affect the way you navigate the world? What does inclusive technology look like? What kind of technology would you like to see in the world?

Join Just Buffalo Literary Center for a virtual youth workshop! Led by Just Buffalo’s Teaching Artist Richie Wills, participants will have a discussion session where they analyze the technology around us, followed by a creative writing session where they envision possible futures with transformative technologies surpassing racism and inequities. This workshop is presented as part of the public programs accompanying Johann Diedrick’s Dark Matters, an exhibition and interactive web experience exposing the absence of Black speech in the datasets used to train voice interface systems in consumer artificial intelligence products such as Alexa and Siri.

Optional: To prepare for the workshop, read this article from The Verge.

ACCESSIBILITY NOTE: Writers are welcome to participate with or without video and audio during any of our virtual sessions. If you have any questions/issues accessing any of these opportunities, please let us know and we will work with you to make sure you can participate.

About the Teaching Artist


RICHIE WILLS holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Richie has worked as a Writing Center and BABEL volunteer and as an outreach coordinator for Words on the Street and The Mocha Center. He is also contributing writer for The Galactic Tribe and continues to work as a community organizer. Richie believes in the power of the written word and storytelling to bring people together and break barriers.

About Just Buffalo Literary Center’s Civil Writes Project

Just Buffalo Literary Center’s Civil Writes Project CELEBRATES the legacy of prominent Black writers who have called Buffalo home, whose voices shape history, inspire radical change, and influence current and future generations of poets and writers; DRAWS INSPIRATION from Buffalo’s history as a gateway to freedom along the Underground Railroad; and CHALLENGES our community to grapple with racism and inequities through literature, to find pathways toward justice in the power of the written word, and to open hearts & minds as we confront our shared past and present in order to shape a more equitable future. See more information here.