We had received a grant from the National Arts Council to run a young writers development project called “Me With You: Sharing our Stories”. This included two two-day writing workshops, one in KwaZulu-Natal, and then one in the Western Cape. We had set up the dates, got our facilitators lined up – and then lockdown happened. What to do?
We decided to make the workshop virtual. To try to retain the intimacy and sense of community that make our workshops successful, we chose three channels of dissemination and contact: our mobi site, WhatsApp, and a video conferencing platform. To manage this rather unwieldy three-headed beast, we hosted a dry run with some of our staff members to work out what and when to send WhatsApp messages, what the online course would look like on the mobi site, and how the video conferences would work. This was vital as we realised very quickly how important it was to have a tight schedule and a careful plan.
We invited selected writers who had entered competitions, or had submitted their work and showed promise. Already this was a plus – we could extend our reach across the country, and the participants already had a relationship with FunDza, which meant that this was a great way to get to know some of our Fanz a little better. We also decided to create three groups of 9 or 10 rather than have one big group to ensure that there was time to hear from each participant, and so they could develop relationships within the group.
The results were beyond our expectations! Somehow it ‘worked’. It is clear that the activities we designed helped to develop the writers, and we got some fantastic work. We were also delighted at how quickly a sense of community developed amongst the writers, and the level of participation and community was high. In informal private WhatsApps and in the final sessions, participants described the course as ‘beyond amazing’, ‘life-changing’, it had ‘tremendous impact’.
Here is one WhatsApp message sent by a participant after the second conference session, congratulating the others on their work:
I always go to the neighbour’s house [for the conference session] because mine is busy – people coming in and out. My mother is a seamstress and a village celebrity. The house is usually gossip capital. And the more unsubstantiated the better.
Anyway, the women of the house I was in were on form today. They were at their loudest selves. Ever heard small-town people talk? It’s like a being in a long-distance call using nothing but their voices ????. But I heard Nivashnie’s moving poem, Ashley’s stunner and Njabulo’s word-play. This is just to mention a few. Is Kwandile still at school? I see a Maya Angelou or Sarah Kay there. And Kingsley you are devastating when the signal favours you ????. All of you are just amazing.
The course ran over three weeks, and the length of it may also have added to the feeling of community as participants interacted and commented on each other’s work, and facilitators were able to give individual feedback. It also gave us time to give more content to the online course, so in many ways it was more rigorous than the face-to-face course would have been.
The three groups were facilitated by FunDza staff members: Ros Haden, Dorothy Dyer and Marche Arends. Here are the links to the three writing groups.
The Dreamers (Dorothy Dyer)
The Wordsmiths (Marche Arends)
The Eagles (Ros Haden)
We were very excited to see how well this worked, and are certainly wanting to develop this for the future.