Gateway Writing Project’s OneCity Stories program amplifies voices of local youth, introduces world of multimedia composing

UMSL Daily

Gateway Writing Project, housed in the College of Education at UMSL, hosted OneCity Stories: a St. Louis Youth Writing Program from June 12 to 30. The immersive summer institute was based out of UMSL at Grand Center and brought together high school students from across the St. Louis area to explore the ways in which writing connects multiple forms of media. (Image courtesy of OneCity Stories)
“Do you think writing is power?”
The question, posed one June afternoon inside a classroom at the University of Missouri–St. Louis at Grand Center, drew an immediate response.
“Definitely,” Edwardsville High School student Sydney Hershberger said. “Writing is used in a lot of ways to create change. Sometimes in good ways. Sometimes in bad.”
Indigo Thompson, a student from Metro Academic and Classical High School, also chimed in.
“I believe words are really powerful,” she said. “You take these words that mean nothing and you can add to them. It’s the way they’re brought together that makes them what they are.”
OneCity Stories program coordinators, instructors and students include (back row from left) Diana Hammond, Cathy Griner, William Morris, Johnathan Baker, Cierra Cross, Cindy Combs, Janylaa Owens, Jane Bannester and Katie O’Daniels; (middle row from left) Sydney Hershberger, Locke Meyer, Saidi Muya and Indigo Thompson; and Ray Reichert. (Photo courtesy of OneCity Stories)
Hershberger and Thompson are just two of several St. Louis-area youth who had the chance to ponder such questions this summer – and to explore the power of not just any words or writing, but their own.
Their opportunity? OneCity Stories, a new youth writing program so impressive that it became one of only 10 educational initiatives in the nation to win a $20,000 2017 LRNG Innovators Challenge Grant.
Sponsored by the Gateway Writing Project at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, OneCity Stories is more than a summer camp. It’s an ...

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