WORCESTER – For many in the area, the demise of the “Happy Time Pages” in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette was merely a sad reality in the ever-changing media landscape.
For Worcester blogger and web designer Claudia Snell, it was a call to action.
“I thought it was a terrible message being sent to our youth,” Snell told ThisWeekinWorcester.com [TWIW].
Concerned that young voices were being diminished in the city, she decided someone needed to step up and provide kids with a new way to be heard.
“Another thing that is important to me is sharing the power, creative freedom, and responsibility of being able to self publish,” said Snell. “It’s the thing that attracted me to building for the web back in 1996. It’s an amazing gift and privilege that we can publish our art and thoughts on our own platforms (as opposed to social media). The trouble is, a lot of the skills are not being valued or taught.”
Soon after, she reached out to Jessica Curtin who, in addition to being the co-founder of Punkcake and Haunted Worcester, is a professional educator and an artist.
“[Snell] said ‘Between you, me, and Darcy [Schwartz, founder and owner of ArtReach Studio], we could do something about this,’” Curtin said. Both women have volunteered and also taught classes for Schwartz.
Schwartz didn’t need much persuasion.
But what would this “something” look like?
“For a lot of kids,” Curtin said, “The [Happy Time Pages] was the first time they could see themselves in print. Kids write papers for their teachers, but they don’t consider that publishing.”
“It was almost like — could we create the new version of the Happy Time Pages for students?” Curtin added.
They also realized that teaching kids how to publish their work would help them add skills in other areas.
Curtin said, “Claudia has a really good grasp of what students are going to need in the workforce in terms of ‘you need to be able to write, you need to be able to problem solve, critically think, work together as a group, reach out to people.’”
The two met to hash out the next steps, and Curtin brought her experience as an educational consultant to turn these goals into a curriculum.
“I took great care in lining it up with the Common Core Standards because they outline what students need to be able to do in writing.”
The end result of all of this became the Worcester Youth Press Project [WYPP], a ten-week program in which students in grades 5 to 12 will learn the creative and organizational skills that go into producing their own publication.
Instructors will include Snell, Schwartz, and Curtin, as well as local creatives and subject matter experts like John Vo, Travis Duda, Hank Von Hellion, and Dee Wells.
WYPP’s inaugural session took place on Tuesday, Oct. 8. Students can still register for the next nine weeks here.
At the end of this level one class, the students will present their own showcase “zine” [a self-published booklet] at Arts Worcester on Tuesday, December 17. Future levels will build on the skills taught in this class.
Schwartz – a TWIW contributor – said the significance of the students putting together their own publication is huge.
“There’s something about having something printed that makes it real. It’s giving self-confidence, it’s empowering you, it’s promoting you in a way that other things don’t” Schwartz said.. “This is a launching pad for the students, and you’re going to see them write and draw things and do things in a different way and have a voice in what they think is going on in their community.”
Snell also emphasized the importance of media literacy, ethics and responsibility.
“I hope the students learn to question what they are consuming, who produced it and why. I also hope they learn to take responsibility for whatever they produce and put into the world,” Snell said.
The Worcester Youth Press Project takes place Tuesdays from 6:30 PM-8 PM at ArtReach, 322 West Boylston Street in Worcester. For more information, visit www.worcesterypp.org.
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