Plymouth is a school known for its great teacher’s education program, but not just the education majors get the chance to work with local kids and help them get creative. Over the course of the spring semester, the English major based group M.E.S.A has been down at the Pemi Youth Center on Main St. putting on a bi-weekly writing workshop for the kids to spread their artistic wings.
This is the second year that M.E.S.A. has worked to help inspire kids to write. Following the success of last year’s work with youth in Holderness, the end result of this semester’s collection provided both the Plymouth State University students and faculty, as well as the youth center a chance to enjoy creative writing and share their stories and idea.
Every other week since mid-march, English faculty advisors Joe Mealey and Paul Rogalus have joined five or six PSU students in creating prompts, explaining structures for creative poems and helping spark the imaginations of the kids and even a lot of the volunteer staff.
May 2nd was the last meeting for the semester. The group decided to conclude with one more creative piece based on the choice of four different interesting images. After everyone was done, people took turns sharing their stories or poems or whatever type of writing was inspired by the images.
It was exercises like these during the semester that filled up the anthology printed out for many of the kids and volunteers to keep. Named ‘Voices From the Pemi Youth Center’, the small book held one of the most creative pieces from everyone involved, even the M.E.S.A. members.
The experience of sharing work and original ideas between a large group made up of faculty, student volunteers at the youth center, student members of M.E.S.A. and the all of the kids created a comfortable atmosphere where ideas and imaginative thoughts flew freely through the air.
PSU has a great reputation for reaching out into the community and lending a helping hand. M.E.S.A. was able to promote that same ideal but handing over pens and pencils instead. Writing can be an outlet for creativity, emotions and everything in between-helping the kids to understand that and enjoy writing is exactly what workshops like this one are for.
M.E.S.A. plans to hopefully do the same type of creative writing workshop next year so more brilliant kids can get their work recognized by the Plymouth community. Many M.E.S.A. members helped out each week such as Melissa Davidson, Rebecca Cressy, Abbey Ritter, Danielle Blanchette and Amanda Bonacorsi.
M.E.S.A. would like to say a giant ‘Thank you!’ to Bryan and Jessica Dutille with The Pemi Youth Center for allowing us to work with both the volunteers and the kids. We had a really fun time and it was great to get to know more people through their writing. Big thanks also go out to Mealey and Rogalus for leading the group, organizing the anthology with the help of Liz Ahl, and making these workshops possible for students and local youth.