Storytelling is an important facet of the human experience. Whether expressing feelings regarding elements of the world or simply relating events in day-to-day life, telling stories serves as a means of expression through which an individual is able to clarify his or her values, share his or her experience, and bolster his or her sense of self. Storytelling can be accomplished in numerous forms including writing, photography, visual artwork, and music, though increasingly rigid educational standards and difficult budgeting situations have yielded less and less opportunity for the youth to engage in storytelling within the classroom. As such, many youth are deprived of the chance to develop voice and identity throughout the pivotal formative stage of adolescence. 

One means of preventing negative outcomes for youth in a community is to provide community programs, especially those involving opportunities for self¬-expression and development of voice. In this project, two Ball State University students engage in one such project within the Muncie community, working with ten boys and girls at the Boys and Girls Club of Muncie. Through exercises in writing, photography, and drawing, the participating youth worked together to create the publication Voices, which was published both in physical form and online.Thesis (B.?.)Honors Colleg

Bradburn, Colleen F.

King, Michael W.

English

Cardinal Scholar

Voices: Thoughts and Images from Muncie Community Youth An Honors Thesis (HONRS 499) by Michael King Colleen Bradburn Thesis Advisors Matthew Hartman Thomas Price If~-Ball State University Muncie, Indiana May 2012 Expected Date of Graduation May 2012 Abstract Storytelling is an important facet of the human experience. Whether expressing feelings regarding elements of the world or simply relating events in day-to-day life, telling stories serves as a means of expression through which an individual is able to clarify his or her values, share his or her experience, and bolster his or her sense of self. Storytelling can be accomplished in numerous forms, including writing, photography, visual artwork, and music, though increasingly rigid educational standards and difficult budgeting situations have yielded less and less opportunity for the youth to engage in storytelling within the classroom. As such, many youth are deprived of the chance to develop voice and identity throughout the pivotal formative stage of adolescence. One means of preventing negative outcomes for youth in a community is to provide community programs, especially those involving opportunities for self-expression and development of voice. In this project, two Ball State University students engage in one such project within the Muncie community, working with ten boys and girls at the Boys and Girls Club of Muncie. Through exercises in writing, photography, and drawing, the participating youth worked together to create the publication Voices, which was published both in physical form and online. 1 Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank my friend and Thesis partner Colleen Frances Bradburn, without whom this project would not have been fun or possible. Her involvement in shaping our mutual passion for storytelling into an inspired community project was not only helpful to the process, but vital. I would like to thank Matthew Hartman for serving as my Honors Thesis Advisor. Despite an arduous schedule and more than a few grand revisions to my Thesis plan, Dr. Hartman remained a steady voice of support, positivity, and enthusiasm. For that, he has rightly earned my deepest gratitude. Colleen and lowe a great depth of gratitude to the Boys and Girls of Club of Muncie, both to its willing and helpful faculty members and its vibrant and inspirational youth. We extend a special token of thanks to Ms. Yolanda Bonner, whose help in promoting our project and gathering participants was crucial to our success. Thank you. To Elisa, Chyanna, Mylasia, Haleigh, Bryce, Corrisa, DaMarion, Ayanna, Jaclynn, and Patricia, we thank you for your boundless energy, your focused efforts, and - most of all - for your voices. Because of the stories you shared, we move forward from this project inspired. Colleen and I would like to thank our close friends Kyle, Jenny and Mariah for preserving our sanity and allowing us the belief that we, indeed, might persevere and see this project through to completion. Finally, we would like to thank McDonald's for all the delicious Diet Coke in foam cups. Without you, none of this would have been possible. 2 Personal Statement The project "Voices" took shape in a dorm room at three o'clock in the morning. Having hit a dead end in my own Honors Thesis experience, I began venting my frustrations to my good friend Colleen Frances Bradburn, who had also lost sight of her inspiration. "Why can't we work on a project together?" we soon found ourselves lamenting, and a hypothetical discussion of what that project might be gathered momentum like a runaway train. By the time our fledgling idea had evolved into an inspired and plausible project, we were well into the wee hours. Encouraged nevertheless, we drafted an e-mail regarding the project without a moment's delay. Storytelling serves as a driving passion in my life as well as in Colleen's, as I have long been dedicated to telling stories through writing and Colleen has learned to capture them via photography. We became convinced that some good could be done within the Muncie community through working with its youth in a project involving storytelling through these two forms, and we decided it could culminate in a published product called Voices. We'd find our participants at the Boys and Girls Club of Muncie, we decided, because we'd both had the opportunity to work with the vibrant youth who go there and we wanted to provide them a new opportunity to share their voices. The process of preparing for such an involved and multi-dimensional project should likely have been complicated, but we were fortunate enough to find helpful hands wherever we reached. Both of our Honors Thesis Advisors were thrilled to take part in this new project, and both cited seeing our enthusiasm. The Institutional Review Board (IRB) examined our project proposal and informed us it required no additional review. When we contacted Ms. Yolanda Bonner, the Director of Programs at the Boys and Girls Club, she was incredibly enthusiastic and supportive, working with us to gather willing participants and schedule the sessions through which we could put together the project. Throughout the six evenings we spent working with the ten children who chose to participate in putting Voices together, Colleen and I experienced moments of triumph, challenge, and learning. While Colleen would take students outside to take pictures, I would encourage their writing through carefully constructed prompts. Starting points like "If I could change one thing about the world, I would change" and "My best friend in the entire world" yielded surprising results, nine and ten-year-old children expressing concerns about such topics as the environment, cyber-bullying, and financial difficulty. At times, motivating the participants to write required persistence and careful supervision, but the result proved to be worth the effort. The process of selecting, refining, and organizing the pieces of writing and photographs these youth produced was a bit daunting, but Colleen and I 3 decided to share that decision-making process with our participants. The photos and pieces of writing found in the pages of Voices are not merely the product of students performing obligatory tasks, but they were selected proudly by the ten participants themselves. As such, they truly reflect the stories and the voices of the children who opted to work with us on this project. As with most projects of this nature, the process of putting together Voices required some patience and adaptability. Some of the prompts I had planned fell flat with the group of young participants, and some days found them more willing to draw pictures than to write stories. As such, Colleen and I opted to include some of their artwork among the pages of Voices as well. Before setting out to accomplish this project, I anticipated a positive impact on the participants enabled to share their perspectives and stories; an unforeseen benefit, however, was the impact I felt at the handprints their stories left on my heart. To read their words and consider the way the world moves and works through their eyes has been a tremendously shaping experience. Their voices served to inspire my own, and for that I am tremendously grateful. 4 Introduction Storytelling is a deeply important facet of the human experience. Serving as a vital means of expression, the act of sharing stories enables an individual to clarify his or her values, share his or her experience, and bolster his or her sense of self. As human beings, we are drawn to tell stories often, expressing our feelings regarding the elements of the world we interact with and relating the events in our day-to-day lives with others. In this sense, storytelling enables the individual not only to peer deeper within, but also to build connections with other human beings. Storytelling can be accomplished via a variety of media, including writing, spoken word, music, visual art, and photography. Unfortunately, due to a difficult economic climate and increasingly rigid educational standards, storytelling is finding less and less emphasis within the classroom, and many young people are losing opportunities to discover the power of storytelling throughout their formative adolescent years. According to the article "Education in human values (EHV): Alternative approach," this is to the detriment of the holistic student: "The main emphasis in education today lies in acquiring large amounts of information, passing examinations and securing qualifications for future employment. Children in many parts of the world are under tremendous pressure to succeed academically. As a result the jewels of childhood such as imagination and creativity are being swept aside" (Kaliannan and Chandran, 803). According to the aforementioned article, the educational setting's struggle to balance a cognitive learning component with the emotional learning element of artistic expression leads to difficulties down the road: "Schools often have to face a dichotomy between the goals of quantitative achievements in academic standards and fostering the all important needs of the child in a holistic way where the environment nurtures self-confidence, integrity, love, and other moral values required to tackle problems such as poor discipline, bullying and vandalism. Thus, the creation of a learning environment through an appropriate methodology for the school has become very important" (Kaliannan and Chandran, 803). In a very real sense, students deprived of the opportunity to engage in storytelling and expression activities are isolated from the chance to develop key emotional skills. This lack in learning opportunities is most prevalent, as might be expected, amongst school districts characterized by poverty. While public education is constantly seeking to adapt and reform, it's very plausible that an effective solution might be found outside the classroom. According to the article "Long-term Training in Learning and Work for Youth at Risk ... ," programs outside the school setting might be just the ticket to solving this problem: "The belief that community programs are an effective preventative response to the crisis of disenfranchised racialized youth has led to calls by 5 many social and cultural activists for better funding of such programs ... Such programs include athletic as well as artistic choices for youth in their local community settings" (Carter 1). The article goes on to discuss a number of examples, affirming that, in many cases, "youth have been able to use the skills acquired in programs to enter post-secondary institutions and eventually the labour market" (Carter 3). Through effective community programming regarding development of artistic expression, many at-risk youth have been able to find enhanced opportunities and escape the cycle of poverty. As the article points out, this is often because youth are able to understand the value of learning outside of the classroom, which is often viewed as the only place learning can occur: "Learning as it takes place within community organizations gives youth access to knowledge through informal, non-formal and tacit learning" (Carter 8). For our Honors thesis, we endeavored to put together such a project for a population of students inhabiting neighborhoods in Muncie that might be classified as belonging to the lower end of the city's socioeconomic spectrum. Reaching out to the Boys and Girls Club of Muncie, we conceived and implemented a program involving the participation of ten Boys and Girls Club students, all at the formative ages of nine and ten. Working with the students through exercises in writing and photography (both valuable means of storytelling), we encouraged them to share their perspective on the world. Later, we worked with the students to edit, refine, and choose their favorite works, publishing them together in a publication we called Voices. The process of working with living, breathing children in the Muncie community meant clearing our project with the Institutional Review Board, or the IRB. We were given the clear to continue on with the project, though we were encouraged to inform parents of their children's involvement, which we did through a letter provided to the Program Director of the Boys and Girls Club. Enabled to continue, we moved forward with the project. Initially, due to our academic backgrounds in writing and in photography, we intended to focus solely on storytelling in these two forms. In our work with the youth at the Boys and Girls Club, however, we found that some were more willing to contribute drawings than written stories. As such, we opted to adapt our project a bit to include some of their artwork. For the writing aspect of the project, we encouraged the students' stories through prompts discussing elements of the world they would like to change, important figures in their lives, and their vision for the future. For photography, we asked them to take pictures that meant something to them or the stories they had written. Voices, the final product, spans twenty pages and includes written reflections on such topics as cyber-bullying, financial difficulty, and the need for better 6 environmental practices. The photographs and drawings tell stories as well, capturing striking symbols and also important figures in the lives of these children. Their enthusiasm at selecting their stories, photographs, and drawings was tangible and rewarding. The project, they told us, had been "a lot of fun." We opted to publish two copies of Voices, one for the library at the Boys and Girls Club of Muncie and one for inclusion within our Honors Thesis. For further access, we chose to publish Voices online, available for access at any point by the participants of our project. We also chose to grant a digital copy of the publication to the Boys and Girls Club Program Director, as she might have further use for it. As with any project of this magnitude, there were a series of triumphs and challenges to be experienced. While we were satisfied with the work we were able to do with these students in such a short period of time, we both agreed we would have liked to have had more time to spend with them gathering stories and enabling their voices. We would have liked to reach more students of more ages, accessing different types of writing and photography to help unearth further perspectives and voices. While there are certainly elements of the project we would have done differently given the opportunity for another run, we are pleased with the project we created. It is often difficult to imagine how one might be able to positively influence a community. While there are always opportunities to impact a community via volunteering and community service, it is sometimes difficult to imagine how one's area of expertise - writing or photography, for example - might be utilized to the betterment of a community. This project reflects the benefit of applying one's passions to the improvement of a community, as our own passion for storytelling was applied to raise the voices of young people within the Muncie community. The willingness of these Muncie youths to share their stories not only enabled them to develop further their use of storytelling in day-to-day life, but it also influenced our spirits, enriching our perspectives and inspiring us to seek out more stories. Indeed, the voices gathered in Voices were clear and meaningful and important. Voices has also been published online and can be accessed via the following URL: issuu.com/colleenfrancesbradburn/docs/voices 7 Works Cited Carter, Karen. "Long-term Training in Learning and Work for Youth at Risk: Sustainability & Creativity in Policy and Execution of Youth At Risk Programs In Toronto." Thesis. University of Toronto, 2011. Print. Kalianna, Maniam and Suseela Devi Chandran. "Education in Human Values (EHV): Alternative approach for a holistic teaching ." Educational Research and Review Vol. 5 (12), 2010. Print. 8 Cupcakes and Cookies 

Voices : thoughts and images from Muncie community youth

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Voices : thoughts and images from Muncie community youth

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