Creating Magic Through Stories

Creating Magic through Stories
by Megan Gilson

In June, I had the opportunity to volunteer as a program staff member at Camp Michitanki, a camp for young people who have had solid organ transplants. I came to Camp Michitanki as a volunteer for the Story Studio, a camp activity created in partnership between North Star Reach and 826michigan, a non-profit creative writing and tutoring center serving students in Ypsilanti, Ann Arbor, and Detroit. Story Studio was a special part of camp not only because it allowed campers to have a quiet and calm activity in a day filled with action, but it also invited campers to be creative and empowered campers to think positively about themselves and the stories that they can share.

Camp Operations Director, Patrick, noted that a primary goal of camp is to teach campers important life skills that they can use long after camp has ended. One Story Studio workshop, called Story of My Life, encouraged campers to think positively about themselves by listing three to ten words to describe who they are, and then sharing stories about moments in their lives when they demonstrated these qualities. Story Studio writing workshop topics ranged widely, from Robot Camp to Create an Advertisement. These workshops allowed campers to see writing beyond something that they may associate with school, and as a creative process that they can access from a variety of approaches. Many workshops built off of the natural storytelling that kids do when they play: we constructed talking chicken nugget puppets, designed robots with transplants and robots who promoted peace, created advertisements for Angry Birds snacks, and made our counselors wear silly costumes as we wrote stories about them.

Although at times we had to compete with the highly popular giant water slide in front of our workshop, we found that campers had many wonderful, hilarious, and inspiring stories to share. One of my favorite moments from the week was with one of the younger girls’ cabins. When the group settled into the wooden picnic tables, ready to write, our workshop leader Elaine explained that we were going to learn how to draw robots. We were met with overwhelmingly skeptical looks, but Elaine convinced the group that she would make it fun, that the girls could be creative and make their robots interesting. As the girls began to draw different patterns and designs on their robots, they realized that these designs could be turned into special powers. Suddenly, swirls on a robot’s chest had the power to hypnotize, and hearts on a robot’s body could be donated to kids who needed a heart transplant. Through the process of decorating their robots, the girls realized that their robots could have exciting careers and backstories: the heart-filled robot became a doctor, and other robots were nurses, singers, volunteers, and undercover police officers – all heroes that these girls saw in real life. In that short hour, the robots became much more than decorations, and the campers wrote a collaborative story that involved all of their robots working together as a team.

Story Studio allows campers to see value in the stories that they can create and also share about themselves. Each year, 826michigan volunteers collect camper work publish it in a book, allowing campers to see their stories in print as published authors, remembering their stories from camp for years to come. We can’t wait to share this year’s book with the campers!