A summer opportunity for young people to get busy and feed their creative minds has been launched by the UBC creative writing program.
Word Wrestlers is a camp aimed for children, aged 8 to 12 years old to get inspired and create fun projects. It aims to be an open space that is fuelled by children’s imagination. The camp will be held for two weeks in the summer.
Campgoers will be going to many outdoor locations around campus, including the Museum of Anthropology, the Beaty Biodiversity Museum, Nitobe Memorial Garden, Roots on the Roof and UBC Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections. At each of these locations, children will look at various props to complete exercises with creative writing students, professors, poetess Sheryda Warrener and novelist Ben Stephenson, as well as guest authors.
Word Wrestlers are open to all genres, so it is completely up to the children to choose what they are interested in from comics, to poetry and non-fiction. Children will be able to learn about components of writing and practice applying them to their work. At the end of the camp, Word Wrestlers will put together a book that will be available to all contributors with everybody’s work included.
“Children love to be taken seriously and that is what we are doing,” said Sheryda Warrener, one of the participating poets. “Writing helps to install creativity, critical thinking and literacy and fostering imagination propels all learning. We’re thrilled to offer a groundbreaking, specially tailored program for children to experience both.”
During her time in Stockholm, she taught primary classes, taking her students on tours around the town to get the children inspired by the city itself. The students took pictures and used them to create puppets and film a short movie. She then decided to bring this concept to the attention of UBC writing community and is finally launching her project this summer for the first time.
“Word Wrestlers is unlike other creative writing camps in our combination of excursion-based creative programming with the opportunity to work with high-caliber professional writers,” said Warrener.