WritersCorps: A Look under the Hood

Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 325 Chestnut Street Suite 800, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Fax: 215-625-2940; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals

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6

Artists; After School Programs; Public Housing; Public Libraries; Nonprofit Organizations; Community Centers; Writing (Composition); Authors; Youth Programs; Urban Areas; At Risk Persons; Creative Writing; Institutionalized Persons; Correctional Institutions; Secondary School Students; Poetry

California; District of Columbia; New York

10.1080/15411790701678259

1541-1796

This article takes a look at WritersCorps, a program that aims to provide opportunities for youth to discover, develop, and share their writing. The program's success depends on contracting with teaching artists who have the skills, knowledge, and heart to encourage youth to write well. All its teachers are published writers, active community artists, and experienced teachers. As teaching artists with WritersCorps, they join youth at sites in San Francisco. Some go to public school classrooms; others work in after-school programs, public libraries, juvenile lock-up facilities, community centers, or affordable housing projects. WritersCorps began in 1994 as an AmeriCorps program--thus the name--in San Francisco, the Bronx, and DC. WritersCorps is one in a field of programs--run by nonprofits, universities, and governmental agencies--that spring from a vision of art as an activity that belongs to all, an activity that is a human birthright. Most of these programs share a model in which practicing artists go to the places in communities where people are already gathered. Some programs work with youth, as WritersCorps does.

ERIC

2008

EJ810877