Building a Creative Community: Lessons Learned from Efforts to Expand a Youth Social Justice Writing Internship in a Pandemic

Abstract

This is a firsthand account of efforts made to expand a social justice writing mentoring internship during the COVID-19 changes to universities and public schools that began March 2020. The Fearless Writers project was put in place to disrupt neighborhood segregation experienced in the United States by partnering university students with inner-city public high school students. This account incorporates creative writing produced during this time within the internship, with the permission of the writers. These small written pieces serve as evidence of thoughts and feelings shared by members of this unique creative community during a time of health and racial crisis. Reflections are shared about the challenges of continuing a social work internship, including the risk of not knowing what would happen to the project that was constantly shifting while local and state governments were scrambling to plan for community safety.