The Grassroots: Community Writing event, held on April 5 and 6, 2002, was once again part of the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival, and was built around the festival theme of the architecture of language. The Centre for Literacy brought together storytellers and writers who have written and published in community-based settings rather than inside institutions, and who have built bridges among verbal, oral, and visual literacies. They included an accomplished writer/musician who collects alphabet songs and oral stories from rural Newfoundland, and a community poet who writes her life; an urban group of young men and women who have experienced and used violence but now write poetry and take photographs that move them in a new direction; two writers who have been homeless and publish a ‘zine to reach their brothers on the street to tell their stories from the inside; and a native survivor of residential schooling who writes his way out of despair and tries to bring community members with him. He won the 2001 Canada Post Literacy Award as a learner who has joined the ranks of published writers. Several of them have been adult learners, and all of them are involved in some way with literacy communities in their own settings. In these different contexts, literacy provides the building blocks for further learning and for community engagement.

In 2002, Grassroots coincided with an invitational national Symposium on Museums, Literacy, and the Arts, cosponsored by The Centre for Literacy with the Canadian Museums Association. This brought more than thirty participants from across Canada to discuss the possible ways in which the arts could work collaboratively with literacy organizations to strengthen their respective goals and engage more communitybased involvement. The participants attended Grassroots as an example of this type of linking; some of the readers joined the Museum symposium for part of the weekend discussions.

For the Blue Metropolis reading, we asked the storytellers and writers to choose some selections that reflected the theme of the architecture of language.

Readers and participants in Grassroots 2002 • Larry Loyie, and Constance Brissenden, Living Traditions Writing Circle, B.C. (Larry won the 2001 Canada Post Literacy Learner Award) • Michael Paul Martin and Robert Payne Toronto (St. Christopher House Meeting Point) Jim Payne • Carmelita McGrath, poetstoryteller, and Jim Payne, poetsong writer, Newfoundland • A group of writers from Leave Out Violence (LOVE), Montreal. (Source: ONE L.O.V.E. Vol.3 No. 2 Photo: Beth Babinchak) • Jennifer Ottaway, whose homeless woman’s diary was produced on CBC Radio as “Jennifer’s Story,” in May 2001. It won a Commonwealth Broadcast Award. • Open City Productions 2002, a community arts program on the street. They brought canvas and brushes with an open invitation to attendees to record their presence. All the sketches in this section were done by Jennifer Ottaway during the Community Writing event. All readings reprinted with permission.

Leave Out ViolencE (L.O.V.E.) is a national not-for-profit organization dedicated to reducing violence in our communities by building a team of youth spokespeople to communicate a message of non-violence. They offer a photojournalism program, facilitated by professional journalists and photographers, a Leadership Training Program, and publications.

Their educational tools, include “ONE LOVE,” a bi-annual newspaper with a circulation of 50,000, that publishes the work of LOVE youth and is distributed through schools and community networks. The Courage to Change: A Teen Survival Guide, their second book, is a teen-to-teen guide on how to deal with the stresses that can lead to violence. The Leadership Training Program helps youth use their experiences to teach others that there are alternatives to violence. They lead workshops and discussions in schools across Canada, creating awareness of youth violence through exhibits of their writing and photographs.

Web: www.leaveoutviolence.com

Alyssa Kuzmarov is the Regional Program Director at Leave Out ViolencE (LOVE) in Montreal. A social worker and writer, Alyssa is completing her first manuscript entitled True Power Within, a memoir depicting her own healing journey.

Kimberly Flynn, 18, is a talented writer and poet. As a youth leader at Leave Out ViolencE, Kimberly uses her ability to express herself to encourage other youth, in the after-school programs as well as in classrooms, to find their voices. Kimberly’s own voice is powerful in its realness and its delicate probing into the workings of the heart.

Source: ONE L.O.V.E. Vol.3 No. 2 Photo: Ian Berard

Gary Joseph, 21, has been writing poetry since the age of 12. Gary has learned to release his emotions on paper with a dynamic style and rhythm. At Leave Out ViolencE, Gary provides an excellent role model for the youth he talks to in classrooms across the city. He openly explores his own issues and is constantly seeking to learn more about himself and others. His poetry reveals his sensitivity as well as his willingness to take risks, face his fears and triumph!

Michael Paul- Martin is a Cree poet originally from James Bay in North Ontario. He speaks Cree, and reads /writes Cree syllabics. His first collection of poetry, She Said Sometimes I Hear Things, came out in 1996. He is currently illustrating three children’s books, slated for publication soon. For a number of years, Michael has been one of the writers/editors of Street Post newsletter of Toronto West. He has also worked on scripts for theatre of the oppressed and for a movie. Michael volunteers mainly for the poor. In June 2001, he graduated from the Community Leadership Training program at St. Christopher House of West Toronto where the program dealt with Antioppression and Communication (and Critical Thinking), and Conflict Resolution and Negotiation. In the fall of 2002, after openheart surgery, Michael returned to the North to teach.

Robert Thomas Payne was a sailor for ten years. Then he was an actor. At one point he found himself homeless and in need. What he saw and heard in the drop-ins and soup kitchens of Toronto confirmed his belief that all human beings are subject to the same frailties, aspirations and realities, though not the same opportunities. And he saw art all around him. Since 1997, he has volunteered with St. Christopher House/The Meeting Place Drop-In as editor and one of the writers of The Street Post. He thinks a solution to homelessness is opening the lines of communication. He can be found wandering the streets of Toronto, or sitting here and there, listening more than talking.

Jim Payne, from Notre Dame Bay, Newfoundland, He has been a professional performing artist and writer for 22 years. A leading performer and collector of Newfoundland traditional music, he is one of the province’s most prolific songwriters, working in several genres to create musical mosaics of local life. Jim has directed, composed and performed music for theatre productions, as well as soundtracks for plays, documentaries and videos. He has performed on radio and television in Canada and abroad, and has toured in North America and abroad. Jim has many recording credits, He also owns and operates his own recording label, SingSong Inc., which has fifteen currently available titles, and produces concerts and special events featuring traditional and contemporary music, song, story and dance that reflect the Newfoundland experience. Jim plays guitar, accordion, mandolin, tin whistle and violin, and is a singer, storyteller, actor, writer, stepdancer, and teacher of traditional Newfoundland set and square dances.

Web: www.singsong.nfld.com

Carmelita McGrath is a writer, editor, researcher and educator. She has authored books of poetry, fiction, children’s literature, and social history for adult learners. As a member of the Writers Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador/ABE Social History Project writing team, she combined family stories, interviews and archival research to explore the links between oral narratives and documented history. As a workshop facilitator with Educational Planning and Design, she brought creative writing workshop techniques to displaced fishery workers in adult education programs. As contributing co-editor of Wayfaring, Journeys in Language, Learning and Culture, she has co-led workshops in which both learners and educators recast themselves as writers to explore their personal experience of language and education. She recently developed Voice2Voice, a course for Mount St. Vincent University’s Distance Education Program, which explores the intersections of oral and written culture and the ownership of narrative. Her most recent book, a chapbook called Ghost Poems (Running the Goat Books & Broadsides), 2001, delves into the ghost stories of her childhood through the medium of poetry. Her short story collection Stranger Things Have Happened (Killick Press), 1999, won the Writers’ Alliance/Bennington Gate Newfoundland Book Award for fiction and was shortlisted for the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award.