Summer 2005 Youth Programs

Creative Writing Day Camps & Workshops for Children & Teens

For details about SummerWrite 2005, including registration fees, see the SummerWrite 2005 General Information Page.

Single-Days & Weekends

Saturday May 8

Travel Writing & Journal Keeping: Destination Summer

• SY5-N5A0
• Ages: 13–24
• Instructor: Karen vanMeenen [ bio ]
• One Saturday: May 8, 9 am–4 pm, with lunch at a local restaurant,
  plus an optional follow up Saturday, September 18, 11 am–Noon.
• $69 W&B members / $76 general public
• Plus $10–$15 pocket money for lunch

Are you a traveler? Do you spend summers at camp, on the road with your family, at your grandparents’ cottage, or at home basking by the pool? Do you like to document your summer vacations by writing in a journal and taking photographs?

Join us as we get excited about our summer adventures and plan the best ways to keep a written and visual record of our adventures. We will read travel writing from around the world and learn the easiest ways of writing about experiences in the moment, keeping things organized and eventually combining them into a book of your life experience. Then we’ll go on a short adventure to Village Gate to look at art, dine out, and write about it.

You will have the option of gathering again on September 18th at 11 am in a café so we can all share our summer experiences of travel and writing. This course is appropriate for all would-be journal-keepers and travelers with an interest in writing and the tendency to observe the world around them, whether in Fairport or Finland.

Weekend of May 21–22

Write Who You Are: Teen Women

• SY5-N6C9
• Ages:14–20
• Instructors: Karen vanMeenen [ bio ] & Wendy Low [ bio ]
• Friday, May 21, 7 pm–Sunday, May 23, 3 pm
• At the Gell Center of the Finger Lakes
• Limit: 14
• $175 W&B members / $195 general public

Teen women have experiences, problems, feelings, dreams and hopes that are unique. In this retreat, we will explore these personal and cultural issues through poetry, personal essays, sharing life stories, and writing from journal prompts.

Participants will be given the opportunity to write from the heart and share who they are and what they experience with a supportive group of other young women. We will also read selections from insightful books, including Ophelia Speaks: Adolescent Girls Write About Their Search for Self, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women, Odd Girl Out, and Women Who Run With the Wolves, and discuss their relevance in our lives.

Part of the retreat will include nurturing our connection with nature through activities which take advantage of the Gell Center of the Finger Lakes’ beautiful setting. We will also have the chance to stay up late and share our life stories over popcorn and snacks. Pajamas welcome.

Weekend of July 13–25

Gifts of the Earth for Fathers & Sons (Weekend)

• SY5-M6B4
• Ages: Sons 14 and up, and fathers
• Instructor: Edgar Brown [ bio ] & D.J. Kitzel [ bio ]
• Friday, July 13, 7 pm –Sunday, July 15, 3 pm
• At the Gell Center of the Finger Lakes
• Limit: 16
• $175 W&B members / $195 general public

“Gifts of the Earth” is an overnight environmentally-focused program meant to promote bonding between fathers and sons. The program will give you an intense and rich connection to your local landscape

Underpinning the program is the assumption that the outer landscape acts upon the inner landscape, and that exploring one often leads to the exploration of the other. To this end, “Gifts of the Earth” uses a Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) ceremony called the Thanksgiving Address as a template for curriculum.

Each day will focus on different aspects of creation found in the ceremony. Participants will use wilderness skills, games, stories, and writing to discover and articulate their own appreciation for the landscape around them, and to begin a journal that will continue to reflect the bonds between their environments and their lives. You can stay overnight either in the Gleason Lodge or in tents.

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