Civically-Engaged Content-Area Literacy

Creating Spaces of Refuge, Learning, and Leadership for Students

Writing Boston's Future | Building a More Perfect Union

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Summary:

 Writing Boston's Future engaged the local community with the Museum as a site for public education. Partners share how they designed a youth-centered approach alongside a reparative, liberatory justice framework.

Young person speaking at front of historic church with people in pews facing them.

Writing Boston’s Future is a partnership between the Boston Writing Project and the Museum of African American History that aims to engage the local community, especially the youth in Boston’s Black community, with the Museum as a site for public education. Launched in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic and the death of George Floyd, a key focus of this project was to create spaces of refuge, learning, and leadership for Boston’s students.

Listen to this interview with partners to learn how these two organizations designed a youth-centered approach alongside a reparative, liberatory justice framework in order to collaboratively humanize and transform the curriculum while preparing for an anti-racist, humanistic, civic-oriented future.

Project Resources

Summer Institute Agenda (PDF): Examine the details of how the Writing Boston’s Future Summer Institute was designed to support youth in taking ownership of their learning and leadership.

The Program Impact: Watch this video to hear from youth, educators, and family members involved in the project’s first summer institute:


Title of book on photo of woman walking through an archway with gold overlay.

Writing Boston’s Future:
Anthology of Brilliance, Building, and Boston
The final anthology published from the summer 2022 work.
Download (PDF)
This post is part of the Building a More Perfect Union collection.

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