COMMUNITY WRITING & RESEARCH PROJECT
Project Description
The Community Writing and Research Project (CWRP) is a program of the UIC PRAIRIE Group. Its mission is to support the collective capacity of ordinary people to educate, defend, and develop themselves, their cultures and communities, towards the simultaneous goals of personal and social liberation.
The CWRP’s two principal initiatives at this time are:
1. The Community Writing Project (CWP), including the publication of Real Conditions magazines. The CWP also offers trainings in the writing workshop method for people interested in becoming writing workshop teachers or using the writing workshop method in their community educational work. (Please visit the CWP page for more information.)
2. The Community Research Project (CRP), which supports the efforts of community-school partnerships and community-based organizations by training parents and other program participants in participatory action research and evaluation. The CRP also offers trainings in participatory action research (PAR) for people interested in doing community research and evaluation.
The CWRP is committed to developing projects in which community writers and researchers become teachers of writing and research in their own communities. We frequently bring together community writers and researchers from different backgrounds to share their writing and research work. We are currently developing community writer and researcher learning networks where experiences can be shared and knowledge expanded.
The CWRP is based in the principles and pedagogy of popular education -- also referred to as education for human liberation -- and takes a feminist, anti-racist, anti-classist approach to personal and collective education toward democratic social change. Principles of popular education include the following:
** The fight against oppression is in part a struggle to have a "voice." As ordinary people articulate their experiences, the value and legitimacy of their knowledge will promote positive change in their communities.
** The ability of ordinary people to participate in local community and broader public discourses as equals is supported by collective endeavor; that is, by the belief that we are all "leaders together."
** The fight for social change is facilitated when ordinary people have the tools to explore, analyze, evaluate, and act upon their worlds. This includes gaining the kinds of research, evaluation, organizing, and literate skills that are often not available to adults who live in marginalized communities due to the unequal distribution of resources.
The CWRP contributes to education for liberation by:
** Facilitating partnerships among community organizations and with public institutions (such as UIC) around issues of concern to the residents of poor and immigrant neighborhoods.
** Offering adult writing workshops and publishing writers’ work based in their experience in the magazine Real Conditions.
**Training and supporting community residents in groups to conduct participatory evaluation and research.
**Disseminating the written products of community residents’ writing and research.
For more information contact Janise Hurtig, the CWRP coordinator at:
PRAIRIE Group, College of Education, UIC
312-413-3367 or jhurtig@uic.edu
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