The MBWP wishes to congratulate the three projects that will be supported this year through the Innovation in Writing Project:
- "Humans of Grant Park High School" proposed by Shaylyn Maharaj-Poliah and Rheana Baril-Bissett, University of Manitoba. Inspired by the “Humans of New York” initiative, the project aims to encourage young writers, photographers, designers, and artists to build relationships with members of the Grant Park community. Students in grades 7-12 will be interviewing members of the community and featuring their stories and photos in a "Humans of Grant Park" Instagram account.
- "Class Act?: Inquiry and Reconciliation" proposed by Sean Giesbrecht and Kimberly Proutt, Linden Meadows School. With their Grade 4 classes, Giesbreht and Proutt are collaborating on a year-long inquiry question: “What might meaningful reconciliation look like to you?” The project aims to teach the truths of Canada’s Indian Residential School System, inviting students to respond to these truths by imagining what a reconciled Canada could look like. The students will create and publish a picture book featuring lyrics to a song co-written with local singer-songwriters, as well as student-created artwork to reflect both the journey of learning about the past as well as hopes for the future.
- "The Many Voices of Glenlawn Project" proposed by Wayne Davies, Vindra Jain, and Cindy Petriw, Glenlawn Collegiate. The project aims to give voice to the multiple languages beyond English in the student body at Glenlawn. In light of the harms done to Indigenous peoples through the deliberate destruction of their languages, it seems incumbent upon schools to find new and novel ways to create spaces for all students to keep, hone and celebrate the language(s) that are important to them and their families and communities. The new initiative will: create a new school publication devoted of multilingual and multimodal student writing; launch a peer writing mentorship program, with space and time for emerging writers to work with volunteer peer writing mentors; and support a group of young people interested in addressing stereotypes and biases through expressive forms such as rap.