April is Earth Month and we’re going all out. In the weeks ahead you’ll be hearing ALL about the great projects and events we’re working on, but the following one is definitely my favorite. For April I’m teaming up with RiverSpeak, the local non-profit arts forum, to support their monthly creative challenge. This month it’s all about writing and the Spokane River – two of my favorite things.
Before I became the Spokane Riverkeeper I was a blogger – I guess I still am a blogger, but that’s what I did pretty much all the time. And before that I was a journalism student at Eastern Washington University. And a long time before that I was bringing short stories and essays home to my grandmother who to this day always reminds me that she knew I was going to be a writer. While I still blog and write and enter as many writing contests as the Inlander does, I hardly consider myself to have fulfilled my grandmother’s vision. But that hasn’t stopped me from being plugged in.
Since first hearing about RiverSpeak I’ve been following their many endeavors. Having a fair amount of artist friends will do that, but also any group that throws together a Limerick contest in conjunction with my favorite holiday is worth the attention. In case you don’t know, RiverSpeak is a non-profit forum, communications hub and just generally a catalyst for Spokane’s art scene. Their mission reads, “To nourish and sustain Spokane-area participation in the arts by providing a community forum for new and established local talent to share work, collaborate, foster dialogue, connect to opportunities, and build community.”
Once I became Riverkeeper I knew I wanted to find a way to work with them on something. I mean come on, the names match up too perfectly. After an ill-fated attempt at inspiring local environmental advocates to participate in a writing project for “The Living River” blog, I reached out to RiverSpeak to see if they’d be interested in taking on a similar idea as one of their monthly creative challenges – this being a writing one. And with it being Earth Month I figured it was perfect. Thankfully they agreed! So without further ado, I’d like to introduce the RiverSpeak April Creative Challenge: Writing for the River
Do you love the Spokane River? Have you had some memorable experiences on or near our wonderful local river? Then this month’s creative challenge is for you:
Finish one to all five sentence starter fragments below, staying conscious of the broad theme which is, “What does a clean Spokane River mean to you?” The hope is that through this exercise, a narrative will unveil itself: an interesting story about the person and about what the Spokane River means to our community. What can we learn about somebody when we only give them 20 words to start? There are no length limits, but please be reasonable (no manuscripts!)
Participants will be encouraged to attend Spokane’s Earth Day event on Satruday, April 23rd and read their narrative at the open mic that will be set up on Isabella’s Rooftop OR maybe on the main stage. There will be a specified time for this portion of the open mic, and the event will be publicized as a feature of Spokane’s Earth Day event which annually draws well over 1,000 people to downtown Spokane.
Here are the sentence starters:
1) Every time I see the Spokane River I….
2) I’ll never forget….
3) The most powerful….
4) I’m happiest when…
5) I never asked…
If you’d like to participate, please submit your work to: riverspeak.net@gmail.com. And If you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask me as I can help get them answered. It would be really cool to show the community how much the Spokane River means to the citizens and to show that in a fun and creative way. Nature is the ultimate inspirati0n. Give this a try!
The idea for this came to me when I was on a plane recently and found an Esquire magazine in the pocket in front of me. Esquire uses this exercise to get interesting comment from actors, musicians, artists, etc. Here’s an example. The more of them I read, the more I realized how brilliant it was. It’s such a fun way to get people to open up and write freely.
Over the course of the next week I will be posting some examples of this that I received from my aforementioned attempt at trying this with the environmental community.
