Williams was a regular at CAM events and played an important pioneering role in the movement, "which was to have an inestimable influence on the British art scene for the next fifteen years". In April 1967 he held an informal meeting at his studio in which he talked about his work, his creative process, his influences and philosophy. The meeting was attended by Brathwaite, La Rose, Salkey and Harris. At CAM's first Symposium of West Indian Artists, which was held at the West Indian Students' Centre in Earl's Court on 2 June 1967, Williams gave a short speech about themes in Caribbean art. He also attended the first CAM conference in September 1967 at the University of Kent, and presented a paper entitled "The Predicament of the Artist in the Caribbean". In this paper he argued against ideas that art should be figurative or narrative, while also suggesting that Caribbean artists need not turn to contemporary European artists for examples of more abstract or non-narrative forms; they could, instead, find precedents in the "primitive" art of South America and the Caribbean. In May 1960 he contributed a number of paintings to CAM's first art exhibition.