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DURHAM -- Letting people tell their own stories is a major part of a creative writing program run by Ebony Golden.
Called "The Community Writing Intensive," it is currently focused on exploring ways to improve the prison system.
"We're looking at ways in which youth are involved in the prison system and the way our communities can be more mobilized to create stories around change and transformation, and thinking about ways to engage and intervene in the prison system," Golden, creative director of the writing program, said in an interview Sunday.
Golden is helping writers with their manuscripts at the workshop's center at 110 E. Geer St.
The project is sponsored by the North Carolina Humanities Council, a statewide nonprofit and affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and other organizations.
"Overall, the goal is for people in the community to tell their stories and be able to create change through creative writing and creative performance,'' she said. "This allows artists, activists, community members and social workers here in the Southeast. We're creating a creative think tank.''
Golden said participants are trying this year to rethink how the prison system might be run better.
"We feel there is a creative way to think about what's going on in our communities and how we're interfacing with the prison system.''
She said some people in the program believe the prison system should be dismantled and re-created.
"Some of us believe there should be more creative and community-based intervention,'' she said. "We believe communities can make an impact on what's happening with the youth and the people who are going to prison.''
She said creative writing can help people unlock new ways to think and improve the prison system and the rest of society.
One person getting support from the program is Aya Duafe of Durham, originally from Cambridge, Mass.
Duafe is a mother, poet and dancer who performs in schools throughout North Carolina with The Magic of African Rhythm, based in Raleigh. She's creating her own production, which she calls a "fusion of dance, writing and photography.''
She is currently working on a manuscript about the relationship between mothers and daughters ''when daughters become mothers,'' and finding support through Golden's writing workshop.
Also participating in the workshop is Nia Wilson, executive director of Spirit House in Durham, which ''works primarily in the African-American communities to help empower those affected by racism, poverty, illiteracy and gender discrimination.''
Wilson works with youths ''who may be on the fast track to prison.''
"We use arts as part of the way we do our work, because we believe that art helps people to be creative and to envision innovative ways to change things affecting the community,'' she said. "So poetry and writing is one of the things we use a lot in the work we do.''
Wilson said cultural arts help people become visionaries.
"Everyone is a poet and an artist, and we try hard to communicate that,'' she said. "It's all art, and it's beautiful.''
