Other Projects

The core of the WITS program involves writers working in schools, but WITS also has projects in a number of other settings:

The Menil Project
What began as an experimental project has become a nationally acclaimed, innovative use of visual art to promote creative writing. WITS writers may bring their students on field trips to The Menil Collection museum once each year. The writer and three WITS writers at The Menil lead students through the museum in groups small enough to allow both written and verbal response. Corresponding with the tour, a visual artist visits the students’ classrooms to lead an art project.

M. D. Anderson Cancer Center
One of the most rewarding WITS projects is the twice-weekly program at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center where WITS writers work with children being treated and their siblings. As writer Nicole Brogdon puts it, "Working here has reminded me that writing can draw windows out of a hospital room, and by extension, out of other difficult situations...helping us all to reconnect with human emotions. Never have I felt that my teaching was more needed than here."

Texas Children’s Hospital
The Texas Children's Hospital project began in 1998 and is modeled after the successful collaboration with M.D. Anderson. One writer works year round at the hospital with children in the Cancer Center and in the Bone Marrow Transplant unit. The Splendid Review, a quarterly newsletter of children’s writing from the project, is given to patients and siblings from TCH as part of the Arts in Medicine Program. In the summer of 2003, WITS also began work with children in the Renal Department. These children receive one-on-one writing instruction during their dialysis treatment.

Community Family Center (formerly Chicano Family Center)
WITS began collaborating with Community Family Center (formerly Chicano Family Center) in 1997. One writer will work with up to 50 children from neighborhood elementary schools in after-school writing workshops. In previous years, the collaborative components have included DiverseWorks and Cecilia Vicuña, a Chilean poet and artist. Writing encourages these students to develop a sense of self as part of a real community and to deal with challenges and feelings around such issues as gender roles, family roles, values, and racism.

School Literacy and Culture Project, Rice University
Since 1988, WITS has offered intensive workshops to children pre-K through 12th grade during the summer in collaboration with the School Literacy and Culture Project (SLC) at Rice University's Center for Education. The workshops are team taught by teachers and writers and include a trip to The Menil Collection. The Houston Press recently named the Summer Creative Writing Workshops Houston’s “Best Summer Program for Kids.”

Young Writers Reading
Each spring WITS celebrates some of the most outstanding young authors in Houston at the Young Writers Reading. The 25th Anniversary event was held at Discovery Green in downtown Houston.

Houston Arboretum & Nature Center
In the fall of 2002, WITS and the Houston Arboretum & Nature Center began a partnership to create an environmental writing program for inner city elementary school children. The vision of the project is to engage urban youth with their environment, exposing and educating students on the natural world. WITS writers lead classroom units on nature writing, culminating in a field trip to the Arboretum’s 155-acre forest sanctuary in the heart of the city. There, the students record and sketch as naturalists and write stories and poems inspired by their experiences. WITS publishes a collective anthology of the project and a special public reading for the participating schools is held at the Arboretum to celebrate the students’ writing.

Additionally, WITS has partnered with the following organizations:

AIDS Foundation, Houston

The Children's Museum of Houston

Da Camera of Houston

Harris County Juvenile Probation Department

Houston Area Women’s Center

Houston Center for Contemporary Craft

Houston Public Libraries

I Have a Dream, Houston

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

The Orange Show

Sandra Organ Dance Company

The Institute for Rehabilitation and Research (TIRR)

University of Houston-Downtown