Hear what the teaching artists and participants have to say about their experience with Her Words. Video by Erico Rovayo.
Registration for our Fall 2024 program is now open! Sessions will start October 9, and will end in early June 2025.
Teen girls and gender-expansive youth in Morristown who attend middle school are welcome to join Her Words. Students will meet each Wednesday at Frelinghuysen Middle School from 2:30 PM – 3:55 PM October 9, 2024 through June 2025. Refreshments will be provided at each session.
Please contact Adia Harris, Program Director, at 973.538.1229 or aharris@cfp-mnh.org or Sarai Warsoff, Interim Program Administrator, at swarsoff@morrisarts.org with questions.
About the Program
Her Words is a creative arts and mentoring program that offers free workshops on the arts, expressive writing, and wellness for underserved teen girls and gender-expansive youth, many of whom are from socially and economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Her Words empowers youth to share their stories, shape their future, and create change in their lives and communities. The program helps participants develop the 21st Century skills necessary to combat antisocial and self-destructive behaviors as well as challenging negative influences in their lives such as racial and gender issues; unstable and/or unsupportive family structures; trauma; poverty; and exposure to family or community violence. By focusing on the arts, education, mentoring, and socialization, participants build English language literacy and critical/creative thinking skills, and improve important social and emotional skills including communication, problem solving, collaboration, and perseverance. The weekly two-hour after-school workshops provide an ongoing, reliable, and safe forum where participants examine issues facing them, share experiences, feelings and insights, and work through a range of concerns that impact them by reading, writing, creating artwork, and performing in a culminating event. These activities also help to strengthen the youths’ autonomy, sense of purpose, social competence, and self-esteem.
Her Words supports the academic, social, and emotional growth of underserved youth in our community by enhancing learning through literary activities, drama, and a wide range of creative arts, thus strengthening the participants’ capacity to adopt healthy behaviors and positively transform their lives.
Her Words Past Sessions:
Summer 2024 Recap
On August 26, 2024, we held the culminating event for our Summer 2024 Her Words program at The Morristown Neighborhood House. During the 8-week summer program, the girls explored various art forms with different teaching artists each week. Because of this, the culminating event took an exciting new format: a panel discussion in which the girls shared the work they created and their experiences with each art form.
The activities they participated in varied from podcasting to calligraphy to poetry to financial/life mapping. When the girls spoke about these experiences, one theme was common: they were pleasantly surprised by activities they’d never tried before. Many of them had never done financial/life mapping, but getting to creatively envision their futures quickly became one of their favorite experiences.
Spring 2024 Recap
On June 6, 2024, we held the culminating event for our Spring 2024 Her Words program at The Morristown Neighborhood House. The girls truly had a busy spring. Outside of all the creative writing they did, they also found time to work on their podcast and create 3D art using virtual reality with artist Dan Fenelon.
During the culminating event, each participant shared a piece of poetry they had worked on during the spring session. They also shared a poem that they had written as a group about bravery and what it means to them. “It’s fear that keeps holding me back, but bravery keeps me strong and on the right track / Bravery means to conquer your fears and find strength when danger is near”, read some of the lines.
Summer 2023 Recap
On August 18, 2023, we held the culminating event for our Summer 2023 Her Words program at The Morristown Neighborhood House. The girls introduced and performed their collaborative play, Diamond’s Redemption.
During their 8-week creative process, the girls expressed common themes that they witness and experience in their everyday lives. They consisted of bullying, poverty, girl empowerment, and the overall navigation of middle school as a teenage girl.
Inspired by these themes, the girls collaboratively wrote a beautiful story about a 13-year-old girl named Diamond. Diamond had an appreciation for art and especially loved pottery. Her family experienced financial challenges which resulted in her being bullied. The story concluded with Diamond and her bully becoming friends and an added bonus of her winning an art competition, where she ended up giving her prize money to her mom to help support her family.
Spring 2023 Recap
On June 29, 2023, we held the culminating event for our Spring 2023 Her Words program at The Morristown Neighborhood House. At the performance, the girls shared a collaborative writing piece along with artwork they felt led to create. The art pieces captured their personalities and complemented what they wrote and spoke about.
One of the two leaders of the program, Cyndall Brice said, “Adia and I were so proud of the girls because they showed confidence and self-awareness through their work. Over the 10 weeks, the students grew tremendously and discovered how special they are and that their voices truly matter. We couldn’t have asked for a better group to work with for this occasion.”
Summer 2022 Recap Video
Take a look at our 2022 Summer Her Words class at their culminating performance, “What They Don’t Tell You,” a play written collaboratively by the teen members.
Video by Erico Rovayo.
2020-2021 School Year
Click here to download the zine, “What Will My Verse Be?” which features flash fiction, poetry, flash memoir and monologues written by teen members of Her Words during the 2020-2021 school year.
Click here to hear the young women of Her Words read selections from their creative writing.
Her Words is a program of Morris Arts in partnership with the Morris School District in Morristown, New Jersey. Our staff is Adia Harris, Program Director and Lead Teaching Artist and Cyndall Brice, Program Administrator.