Building a Rainbow, One Writer at a Time: An Urban Youth Memoir Project

Abstract

Abstract: Chapter Description

The Indiana Writers Center (IWC) believes that everyone has a unique story to tell. The mission of IWC is to nurture a diverse writing community, to support established and emerging writers, to improve written and verbal communication, and to cultivate an audience for literature in Indiana (About the Indiana Writers Center, 2012, para. 1).

For more than 30 years, the IWC, a nonprofit organization, has worked to foster a vibrant literary writing community in Indiana, providing education and enrichment opportunities for both beginning and accomplished writers. (About the Indiana Writers Center, 2012, para. 1).

Teacher, writer, and community activist Darolyn “Lyn” Jones was asked to join the staff at the IWC in 2005 to meet the new initiative: take writing out of the center and to marginalized writers. Her charge was to help writers both find and share their voice.

The origin of this initiative began with a group of girls, ages 12–22 in a maximum state prison. The girls became the Center’s muse and because of their words, the Center was compelled to build, create, and nurture even more youth writers. The backstory of the IWC work with the girls will be featured in this chapter.

The product of that early work has now evolved into Building a Rainbow, an eight-week long summer writing program designed to teach creative narrative nonfiction writing program to youth using a curriculum that helps them identify meaningful moments, see them in their mind’s eyes, and bring them alive on the page in vivid, compelling scenes.

Currently funded by the Summer Youth Program Fund (SYPF) in Indianapolis, the Building a Rainbow writing program is free to youth participants and held in various locations that serve a diverse student population. This chapter will highlight our work with four different community partners: our first group of youth, girls at a maximum state prison, and our current work with an all African-American youth development summer camp for students ages 6–18 run by the Indianapolis Fire Department, a Latino leadership institute that works with Latino students ages 11–16, and a south side, historic community center that works primarily with Caucasian students living in poverty.

By forging new collaborative relationships with arts organizations, schools and universities, community organizations and social service providers, IWC has worked successfully to

• Create community with our writers and with partnering sites

• Identify, sort, and prioritize program objectives (Caffarella, 2002, p. 21) in designing and delivering curriculum that meets the diverse needs of each site’s student group and meets our mission

• Solicit and train instructors, university student interns, and community volunteers (Caffarella, 2002, p. 21)

• Present, publish, and perform our work for the greater writing community.

Besides learning about the programming above, readers can also read and hear the words and voices of students at the sites as they share their memoirs of people, places, and events that have shaped them.

Citation

Jones, D.“. (2015), "Building a Rainbow, One Writer at a Time: An Urban Youth Memoir Project", Living the Work: Promoting Social Justice and Equity Work in Schools around the World (Advances in Educational Administration, Vol. 23), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 109-131. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-366020140000023006