To download the Poetry Workshop Planning Guide, click here.

To learn more about New Urban Arts, click here.

New Urban Arts created this guide as a resource for high school students who participate in our programs. Through Afterzone, a new initiative of the Providence Afterschool Alliance (PASA), 4 active writers at New Urban Arts were selected to mentor junior high students in developing a writing practice once a week after school for six months.

The rationale for creating this document was to provide Youth Mentors with structure and support, while also allowing them to find their own teaching style. Rather than devise a strict curricula for the program, New Urban Arts decided to uphold its arts mentoring model in which educators do not abide by formulaic teaching methods. The role of Artist Mentor is based on the belief that self directed learning is most effective in sustaining a creative practice, and is best supported through building a relationship with a mentor that encourages, challenges, and guides the student. This youth-led, relationship based approach to arts education serves New Urban Arts mission.

The Poetry Workshop Planning Guide exists within a "choose your own adventure" framework, in which Youth Mentors can choose and adapt freewriting prompts or writing activities to their liking. This gives young people the support they need to be successful, while also ownership in the workshops that they are leading.

The exercises compiled were inspired by various resources including writing workshops at New Urban Arts led by Artist Mentor Erica Carpenter, The Adventures of Dr. Alphabet104 Unusual Ways to Write Poetry in the Classroom & the Community by Dave Morice, Theater for Community Conflict and Dialogue: The Hope is Vital Training MaNew Urban Arts by Michael Rohd, Third Mind: Creative Writing through Visual Art edited by Tonya Foster & Kristin Prevallet, Poetry for the People by June Jordan, and Young Chicago Authors' Say What Magazine. Let us know if you feel a resource has not been credited. Note: Creative license was used with poetic terminology.

This manual has been developed by New Urban Arts' Program Director, Sarah Meyer, in cooperation with the following students: Rosa Cantor, Mary Adewusi, Pedro Gonzalez, and Elizabeth Keith, as well as the Executive Director, Tyler Denmead. Check back to www.newurbanarts.org for progress on this and other projects' implementation and please send your feedback to info@newurbanarts.org.

Though we aim to share information freely to better our field, we also recognize that dollars allow us to continue our work and generate further resources. So… if you use this resource and find it useful, we ask you to return to our website and donate $20.