Over five years ago, a group of complete strangers started meeting at the Toronto Reference Library. Although we didn’t know each other, we were collectively interested in reading and writing personal essays. So, every month Brianne Benness (who started the group) sent us a prompt and we wrote a response to it.
We often shared tables with students studying and definitely got the odd glance in reaction to our deeply personal conversations. Fun might not be the right word, but it was a place for learning about each other and sharing in the experiences of others.
We did this for about a year and enjoyed the process so much that we wanted to bring it to a wider audience. Enter: Stories We Don’t Tell. In order to differentiate ourselves from other events and build in our Toronto Reference Library methodology, we decided to hold two workshops leading up to each event. This has proven time and again to be the secret recipe to the sustainability and success of the show.
For the first workshop, we want to meet you where you are at with your story - whether it is fully written out or just an idea. We ask that you come to the second workshop prepared with your story written out. The second workshop is where the editing comes into play. The workshops continue to be a source of understanding why people share stories, resulting in some incredibly honest and authentic experiences. Even though we have been doing this for over five years, we still workshop our own stories and learn something about our writing and ourselves each time.
Brainstorming remotely - we like fun backgrounds.
Since the beginning of COVID-19, the Stories We Don’t Tell crew have continually met remotely for podcast recordings and brainstorming ideas on how we can continue to engage with our storytellers and audience.
The first thing on the agenda was workshops. We miss them. Over the course of the summer, we’ll be holding remote workshops that anyone from anywhere can join. These are going to be general workshops and not tied to any event because we don’t know when that will be. You can have a written piece that you’ve been working on or just an idea. You can sign-up using the form below or email us through our contact page.
We hope to see you there.