Writers’ in the Community is flourishing. After five years of continuous activity, the program has expanded. Two new partnerships have been formed with a rehabilitation centre and a community centre. A former student participant was hired as an intern to assist the facilitators in his former school while he engages in his own creative and professional development.
Another exciting development: WIC plans to hire a former student participant as an intern in his former school this fall.Writers in the Community, a collaboration between The Centre for Literacy and the Quebec Writers’ Federation (QWF), brings at risk adolescents into the creative mainstream.
The Quebec Writers Federation and The Centre for Literacy have developed an evaluation protocol for the Writers in the Community (WIC) project.
This will allow the participating schools and agencies, the teachers, writers and the two sponsor organizations to set distinct goals, identify what will count as success and track outcomes. The process engages all the parties in thinking deeply about what they want the project to achieve, how far we have come in achieving those goals and allows us to constantly adjust projects for better results.
This spring, three projects were in Montreal schools serving students with behavioural difficulties and/or social maladjustments. They met in eight sessions with professional writers to explore a variety of approaches to literary expression. From this activity they published three collective “zines” and one individual chapbook, and gave two readings at which some of the young poets shared their creative work with fellow students and the general public.
The four zines produced during the spring Writers in the Community (WIC) workshops are now available on the Quebec Writers Federation's WIC page.
Mountainview School (Larissa Andrusyshyn)
Dawson School
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