I sit here on the eve before the first day of a workshop series I’ve been working on for quite some time. Thanks to the WereldMuseum Rotterdam and to Dona Daria, the workshop I’ve been dreaming of will finally become a reality. Tomorrow, will be the first day of a three-day workshop for BIPOC participants in Rotterdam and I am looking forward to it with anticipation.

In preparing the final schedule for the workshop days, I’ve had to refine and narrow down exercises. Creating exercises that will be doable for participants who are a mix of people who might have done some writing before and people who have always thought of creating stories as being something not for them for innumerable reasons, has been a challenge. And I am really thankful for my partner, Hodan, who’s given me such great feedback and encouragement throughout the process of putting the workshop and the schedule together.

I still don’t know what the class will look like exactly, but the programme includes a mix of individual and communal work, and a mix of spoken, written and visually expressed work. I’ve used different elements of this workshop in different environments with different groups and now I’m eager to see what will happen when these elements are used and applied together over the span of three days. Perhaps the most challenging aspect of this workshop is the multi-lingual aspect, but I will cross that bridge when I get to it.

Most important to me is to let the participants experience how much fun it can be to engage with story on their own terms. That is what I’m keeping in mind as I wind down for the night.

I just had to quickly write about it because it’s finally happening.

Oh yes. We will have fun.