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On the second workshop for the public art project

Participant's photo: family at the Washington Monument, 1957

Monday night was the second workshop for the community memoir/public art project. We led seven participants through two hours of writing exercises, asking them to write at least a dozen one line moments of memory which were either directly related to the photos they brought along, or spinning off from them. With this larger group of people, things began to get interesting, and people were writing really moving things. One woman grew up in Canada, and most of her sentences related quite piercing and personal moments of a difficult childhood growing up in a large family as the youngest, somewhat put-upon sister.

We wish we had more time to work with the material that people created, as we would in a full writing workshop. But because of time and budget, we have to content ourselves with getting as much as we can in a shorter session. It's been a good start, and after the next couple of workshops, the public art installation should start to come more into focus.
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