Conference to Spotlight Community Language Arts Education

Centre County nonprofit Ridgelines Language Arts will host a one-day conference focused on what it means to teach writing, poetry and storytelling in community settings, such as youth centers, nursing homes, shelters, prisons and more.

This event on Saturday, Oct. 18 at 3 Dots Downtown, 137 E. College Ave. in State College is open to anyone curious about community arts education — especially teachers, artists, writers, students, social workers and community members — to learn about ways to use their creative skills in diverse community settings.

Although the conference focuses on language arts, the workshops and conversations will be relevant for practitioners across the arts.

Workshop topics include writing collaborative poems with older adults and individuals living with memory loss; teaching storytelling with communities impacted by trauma; lesson planning in unpredictable environments; fostering compassion in the classroom; and practices for deep listening.

The conference will kick off with a keynote address by Julia Spicher Kasdorf, acclaimed poet and director of Penn State’s Creative Writing Program, who will provide background on writer-in-the-community programs.

“Along with the rest of the Ridgelines crew, I have dreamed up this conference to plant seeds towards growing more community arts educators in our region,” Ridgelines founder Abby Minor said. “We hope this will be a productive event for many different kinds of teachers, artists and writers in central PA.”

Whether you’re working in classrooms, clinics, libraries, or living rooms, this conference offers a space to explore possibilities of teaching in settings outside traditional classrooms, gain new skills, and build relationships with others doing similar work.

Registration information is available at RidgelinesLanguageArts.org. To encourage participation from a broad range of community members, the fee for the event is on a sliding scale, and lunch will be catered by local chef Rebecca Larsen of Gather & Company.

Ridgelines provides expert language arts education to those who are impacted by stigma and injustice in the ridges and valleys of central Pennsylvania. Our programs make space for participants to explore their voices and their stories, exercise their creative agency, and advocate for personal wellbeing and social change.