Creative Writing by People of Color with Developmental Disabilities

We arranged and executed a fall class with Accord, and have arranged spring classes with Accord, Interact, MSS, Next Step, and ISD 197--meaning our total goal of six classes has already been set in motion!

60% of the Accord class was made up of students of color. 100% reported that they feel proud of their work, saying of the teacher "he has been a good listener" and "very clear explanation."

We released a book entitled "Heart's Guest #8" that was celebrated with an author reading at the University of Minnesota's Institute on Community Integration with over 80 people in attendance.; Quantitatively, our project goals were to hold six creative writing classes serving 60 adults with intellectual/developmental disabilities, in conjunction with new and prior organizational partners, prioritizing students of color.

We held six classes! They served 59 students. By our best data, the racial makeup of students was 30% Black, 21% Asian/Asian American, 9% Latino, and 40% white (meeting our goal of at least 50% students of color). The organizations we partnered with were Accord (twice), Next Step, MSS, Interact, and ISD 197. While ISD 197 was the only new partnership forged by this project, it is worth noting that this grant helped rekindle class partnerships with MSS and Interact that had been dormant for years. Additionally, it nudged all prior partners toward more intersectional racial consciousness in programming, as intended.

We also sought for 95% of students to report that they are proud of the work they created, and for 80% of audiences to cite that Cow Tipping writing changes the way they think about disability.

88% of students surveyed either agreed or strongly agreed that they were proud of their writing (on a scale of 1-5, the average response was 4.3). That is lower than our target, with most neutral or disagree scores coming from our partnership with Next Step transition program. This may have been due to the setting (it's in a school, so our class may have just felt like an addition to the school day), or the teacher (who despite our training was less inclined to "activate" or inspire students, and was also coached by a new contractor we brought on due to having a record number of classes).

For audiences, at the Lake Monster book release event we surveyed, 76% of respondents cited a changed perspective on disability--also a bit lower than our target. One reason may be because that audience was disproportionately made up of support staff and family of authors (76% of the audience, versus a usual balance of closer to 50%) and we were thus "preaching to the choir." We did have other events made up of a more even balance of familiar vs. new audience members, such as our Penn-Lake Library book release, however we only chose to survey one to avoid survey fatigue among participants.

All that said, the vast majority of students and audiences appreciate and are pushed by our work! Here are some more qualitative comments from surveys of students, support staff, and teachers:

"I think I want to do this class again all the time"
"Happy Happy Joy"
"getting out of comfort zone"
"I've been writing ever since highschool, this class puts me even more in touch with my creative side"
"I should write more often"
"So cool to see these clients get to express themselves like this"
"I learned that anyone can be a poet or author"
"great job--just have my wheels turning for future ideas"
"The best part of this program is getting to witness students owning their power and unleashing their most creative ridiculous powerful tragic heartbreaking confusing complicated developed multi dimensional personal imagined ideas. Their ideas and stories and visions and questions and concepts are amazing, it's gift to get to hear them."