Writing with the Young Gunz at Purple Thistle
iPhone photo by Carla Bergman
Today I did a story jam with 12 young people at the Purple Thistle Centre in Vancouver.
It was a Sunday afternoon workshop at the YoungGunz program for 11 to 15-year-olds – and our “story jam” exercise got everyone focused on writing together. Each week a different mentor comes to lead workshops on photography, screen printing, music, writing, and more. Program organizer Carla Bergman – invited me to lead a workshop on writing and blogging.
In a story jam – as we did it – each person gets a piece of paper and begins a story. We write for a few minutes, then fold our paper so that only the last line of our story is visible. We pass it to the next person, who continues the story where we left off. We continue writing on each sheet and passing our papers to the next person. When the pages are full, we read them aloud. With so many authors, the stories can take some pretty outrageous twists of plot.
As soon as we started talking about blogging, one of the participants said: “I can’t think of what to write about – it’s all just random.” This made me glad I wrote a one-page set of instructions on how to start a blog – including tips for deciding what to write about. I gave out these one-pagers at the end of the session
Another said he had a blog but only wrote a few entries and then stopped updating it. Later, this same guy thanked me and said the story jam helped him get past a long bout of writer’s block. Hearing that made my day!
No one else expressed interest in starting their own blog, but the group is creating a YoungGunz blog in LiveJournal.com. The girls in the group chose to do the exercises I pulled from a Natalie Goldberg book: Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life. Apparently all the writing mentors use her exercises, but the girls wanted to do it again anyways.
The boys went outside and walked around in the rain. My nine-year-old son was delighted to go with them – these cool, funny, friendly guys a few years older. They returned soggy and laughing in time for the girls to read their writing; then they listened quietly. At the end, I encouraged everyone to stay in touch, ask questions if they have any, and keep me up to date so I can enjoy reading their blogs.
The Purple Thistle Centre is a “youth-run arts and activism centre” open in the afternoons and evenings for drop-in, with classes and lots of projects.
“We focus on young people (aged 15-30), because we feel these are the people who need to be supported in their independence the most. But we encourage participation on all levels from people aged one to one thousand.” says the Purple Thistle web site.