DAY ONE: Wednesday, March 18, 2009

The first Neighbourhood Diaries Workshop is on Wednesday, March 18 2009 - 6:30 to 8:30pm. 15 young hopefuls, approximately 10 years of age and 15 writers/mentors at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Strategic Innovation Lab on the 6th floor. (Thank you to Lenore Richards, a supporter and friend.) Juice and cookies are free. My hope is simply to enable an enjoyable and fruitful experience, observe and learn. My wife has offered to assemble the children and now I need to find the writers.

Marc Sullivan, designer extraordinaire, has offered to participate. I hope to begin developing the 'face' of Neighbourhood Diaries with he, Carolyn White and with the ever-vigilant Gillian Lind to keep my honest. Marc has offered up this great example of visualization as a possibility - very interesting.

Patrick Keenan sent this suggestion over as a result of my dissatisfaction with the the way technology tries to deal with dialogue. Unfortunately it is called DEBATEGRAPH. Very interesting though. I continue to try to imagine how the active community will be aware of itself.

Thanks to the input of others I have begun to reflect on the obvious, writing is essential to plays, songwriting, puppet shows, Shakespeare, newspapers, animations, documentaries, television, as well as books. Is my face red? Each of these can be a different dimension of Neighbourhood Diaries. While I know for a fact that some of the children are quite content to write for writing sake, they will all be quite engaged by each or any of these forms. My first thought is, to isolate each vehicle and find someone to champion the project type if there is a interest. that said, it is clear to me that there are other organizations that already have initiatives that mentor children and I would be interested in any of these if you know of them. For example, Robin Sokolowski at the Canadian Playwright association has done great work with children for several years now.

Does anyone know how to get in touch with Sean Cullen?