The Colouring Book Project
Sponsor: Purple Thistle Society
Youth Representative: Gabrielle
The Colouring Book Project is a youth driven project on racial identity development and socialization for people of colour.
The Colouring Book Project is made up of approximately 30 people of colour from diverse communities including: queer, immigrant, First nations, mixed-race, artists, activists, and other specific communities.
Process
Queer and queer friendly youth of colour from across Vancouver will direct and engage in collaboration with older generations of people of colour, peer and non-peer facilitators, and partnering social justice organizations, to explore and self-determine their ethnic culture through an artistic writing process.
This process will be realized over a five writing workshops and one four-day writing retreat, culminating in the publication of selected writings.
It will be sustained beyond the duration of the project by this resource of documented stories, and through the community of peer support and mentorship that has emerged.
Participants will use writing specifically as a vehicle for the reflection, expression and exploration of the following issues in relation to their own experiences: How social experiences inform identity, and the social constructions of race.
The project will be developed in three phases:
Phase One
A series of 5 four-hour workshops, held twice a month, for ten to twenty people of colour.The workshops will explore the subject matter through discussion, story sharing, and the written process - poetry, autobiography, and/or biomythography. They will be facilitated by three to five people of colour.
Phase Two
A four-day retreat on Galiano island that will utilize the experiences, learning, feedback, and ideas gained by the participants and facilitators from the workshops in Part One. The retreat will deepen the explorations of the topic through writing and dialogue.Phase Three (Funded by source other than Get Out!)
A selection of writings from the retreat, and from the initial workshops, will be compiled into a book. This work will offer a range of self, and social reflections on racial identity dev elopement for people of colour within the context of a society that lacks equal representation, and maintains narrow constructions of “race”.This book will be published and disseminated to high schools, PDP Programs, participants, organizations doing anti-racism and race relations work, youth centres, and other related organizations and centres.
The goals of the Colouring Book Project are:
- To address the need for personal empowerment of youth through social and self reflection;
- To create a forum to explore racial identity and related issues and strengthen community;
- To alleviate the need for resource tools to support youth of colour and to build public awareness of the issues;
- To improve the long-term health and well being of the participants and all those involved by fostering their personal empowerment, and enabling participants to reduce barriers within their spheres of influence;
- Building a sustained community network of people of colour from diverse backgrounds that will especially engage the youth by supporting them in ongoing collaboration and connection with older generations of people of colour and involved community partner groups;
- To create opportunities for participants to foster creativity, self-expression and self-exploration; and,
- To reduce barriers to youth of colour who may or may not be involved in the project.
The Colouring Book Project aims to address the prevalent experience of alienation in three ways:
- By creating a forum for the sharing of stories across age differences, diverse ethnic backgrounds and affiliations, and sexual orientations: there is a sense of affirmation and support gained from the process of reflecting on significant aspects of one’s own experiences and realizing you are not alone by simultaneously hearing stories of other’s to which you may relate. It is this collective experience that builds connection and community.
- By including queer and queer friendly people of colour over thirty years of age (approximately one-fourth of the total participants), The Colouring Book aims to further support the youth in realizing their experiences do not exist in a vacuum. It will achieve this by providing the opportunity to build meaningful connections with older generations of people of colour who may be sources of support, inspirations and mentorship;
- By connecting the project to the existing network of youth and social justice organizations in Vancouver.
Contact Information
- Purple Thistle Centre
Contact: Matt Hern
crankmagazine@yahoo.ca
- Youth Contact: Gabrielle
» See a video on the Colouring Book Project
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