Literary Arts

Literary arts is a new program addition that we are very excited about. It involves storytelling through writing (stories, poetry, rap, photo captions), illustrations, and photo-voice (photography to tell the story through pictures and written descriptions). Literary arts is another way to build resilience through language emersion, reading and writing skills, and artistic expression to instill confidence and self-esteem, safety and cultural pride among children whose culture is being silenced or treated as an outsider.

We are starting a children’s community-based storytelling project involving preservation of local and immigrant histories and lived experiences through research, writing and expression through created movement. In partnership with ourBridge for Kids, we are interested in benefits for the children, including language emersion, increased confidence and self-esteem, and sense of safety and cultural pride. During this project we will encourage children, grades 6-8, to share stories about themselves, their families, communities in the US and their home countries. They will learn how to construct compelling stories, and paint and draw pictures that embellish their words. Their stories and artwork will be compiled into a children’s book for publication and distribution to libraries, schools and child-serving agencies.