Community Journalism 101: a course in storytelling for DTES residents

On a grey Vancouver day, the community engagement team met with co-facilitators Jackie Wong and Stefania Seccia for Pie Happy Hour at Acme Cafe to talk about one of the Office’s longest-running programs, Community Journalism 101.

Community Journalism 101 is a series of free, low-barrier journalism workshops, open to community members of the Downtown Eastside. They are run by Megaphone, in partnership with SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement.

Jackie and Stefania are both experienced local journalists, compassionate facilitators, and the former and current managing editors, respectively, of Megaphone’s monthly print magazine, which is sold by street vendors around Vancouver and Victoria. Megaphone is a non-profit located in the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood that is dedicated to providing meaningful employment to low-income vendors and sharing stories that are important to the community.

Jackie has been involved as a facilitator since Community Journalism classes were first offered in May, 2011. Stefania has been facilitating since she took over the position in 2016. Over some shared slices of pie, Jackie and Stefania told us about their experiences as facilitators, and how they define Community Journalism.

This interview has been edited and condensed for the purpose of this article.

How would you best describe Community Journalism 101?

Jackie Wong: To me, Community Journalism is an inclusive, five-week workshop that is an intentional space for Downtown Eastside community members who have historically faced intersecting barriers to otherwise participating in community education or continuing studies courses. So, people who participate are people who might have lived experience with poverty and homelessness or colonial violence, or ongoing health concerns, like mental health or addiction. We founded it with the intention that it was important to make space for people telling their own stories in that way. It felt like there was a lot of interest from the community to do that, but few spaces to learn how.

Stefania Seccia: Community Journalism is an opportunity to get folks in a room who are really interested in a different way of telling stories, and learning those tools so they can better, or maybe constructively, tell their own stories and the stories of their community that they feel go often unheard.

“It’s really about finding your path on what journalism, or what this type of storytelling, means to you, and what you can take away from it.”

— Stefania Seccia, co-facilitator

Could you speak to how you make it an accessible course and how you reduce barriers for people?

SS: Jackie really takes the lead on the outreach and making sure that we get to like-minded organizations — that are either connected to Megaphone or sisters of Megaphone in some way — to make sure that we get the folks that we’re hoping will take advantage of this opportunity, like Jackie mentioned.

I think the way we make it accessible is — as much as we plan for each class, as much as we prepare the workshop and the worksheets — we really make sure that we’re not trying to fit people into a mould. We’re really meeting their needs and meeting their learning ability, meeting their writing ability not putting pressure on them to share, not putting pressure on them at all.

We don’t want anyone to feel like they have to have any major big achievements out of this. It’s really about finding your path on what journalism, or what this type of storytelling, means to you and what you can take away from it.

JW: We’ve been very aware of the fact that institutions — particularly institutions around education and public institutions — carry their own trauma for people and particularly people who have had experiences early in life, whether it’s through residential school or through learning environments that were very rigid and oppressive. We acknowledge that the people that we are trying to reach in the class are people who have also experienced quite a great degree of trauma in their life. So, we really try to take a trauma-informed approach to the way that we’ve designed the workshops, which includes offering people choices, and building power alongside people rather than power over people. That’s really key to the way that I think about the courses and the course content.

We also think about the many ways that people are interested and wanting to express themselves. And so, even though it’s called Community Journalism, it’s not necessarily always a writing class and we’re thinking about the many literacies that people bring into our space. So for example, today when people were sharing their writing, some people shared writing that they were reading out loud from a page and another person shared something that she had been thinking about in an oral way, and we tried to make space for that as much as we can.

“The thing that I love every time is the incredible honesty and heart with which people share of themselves in the workshop.”

— Jackie Wong, co-facilitator

Accessibility means so many things, from the very granular, to printing materials in 14 point typeface in a very clear way, to getting rid of any kind of jargon or academic language, and also creating as many different opportunities as possible for many people to participate. I think that’s really an important way of helping people feel as though they can come to the space and contribute meaningfully any way that they are and also helping them realize that they’re also a leader and expert in their own outcomes and in their own stories.

What are some of the highlights for you, whether it’s a particular memory or just one of the things that you look forward to every session?

SS: I have a general favourite moment that I’ve seen a few times now, where I see someone — especially if I know their backstory already or I’ve gotten to know them through Megaphone — seeing them build confidence to not only sit down and write and focus, and then have that confidence to share after. Those are my favourite moments, hearing what someone has to say.

And then a more specific favourite moment was one of the last times we’ve taught community journalism, there was a Megaphone vendor who was there and she wrote something in class and she always kinda shared. I’ve gotten to know her a lot more personally over the course of the last year and she ended up performing at Voices of the Street, which is an annual Megaphone event. It was the piece that she had written and was so excited about writing, and finished it, and edited it, and sent it to me and then ended up performing it. She’s such an expressive performer and she did such a killer job that I was just so happy that we were able to kind of guide her outside of the classroom to participate in such a meaningful way and then again give her a platform to do what she’s best at, which is perform in front of a group of people.

JW: The thing that I love every time is the incredible honesty and heart with which people share of themselves in the workshop. In the grand scheme of things, we don’t really have that much time together, it’s only five weeks. I find that from the beginning — and this is something that’s kind of magical about the Downtown Eastside community generally — is that there a real desire and a real interest in sharing what’s in your heart and being really honest in your interactions with each other. And not only that honesty, but being in a space where you’re really eager to support each other in that honesty and in stepping forward. I find that we’ve been able to have so many beautiful conversations about what it means to grieve through hardship, and to heal, and to move forward through difficult things. Whether it’s homelessness or trauma or all kinds of things, that’s been so powerful to me. It’s hard to put that into words because I feel like that’s a quality that you can feel in the room and it’s hard to quantify that sometimes.

My favourite thing is when people read their writing and share it with the group, and seeing people return to the workshop year after year. This class we have two people were in the very first 2011 workshop and they were interested in connecting in this way again. Thankfully, we have not done the exact same thing every single time, because that would be boring for everybody, but it’s really cool that they want to come back because for whatever reason they feel like it’s a place that they want to be.