Creative Connections at SCSU
About the Program
Creative Connections is a collaborative program entering its fourth year of operation, in which MA and MFA students from Southern Connecticut State University's English department work with young New Haven writers experiencing homelessness aged 18-24 through Youth Continuum. Youth participants and graduate facilitators share their stories and experiences in a variety of written forms, from poetry and fiction to songs and podcasts. We believe that creativity and writing have the power to connect people who might not otherwise have crossed paths. Our goal is to facilitate an inclusive and empathetic writing community where everyone's voices are heard and valued.
Mission
Our mission is to connect graduate students from Southern Connecticut State University's English department with local youth experiencing homelessness. By reading and writing literature together in a college writing workshop format, SCSU student facilitators and youth shelter clients learn how to process their life experiences through creativity and writing and jointly discover ways that art can be a mechanism for social justice.
Sharing Stories
This podcast features the voices of participants from Youth Continuum. Listen to them as they share their stories and experiences.
Transcript
[Royalty free music to open and fades out]
Val: Hi, we’re creative connections, a writing workshop group at youth continuum in New Haven. Each week we gather around the dinning room table to create and share stories.
From vampire comic books to goofy haikus, creative connections does it all. This semester we decided to branch out and share outside of the walls of Youth Continuum.
Marquette: My name is Marquette Freeman. I'm 24 years old, and I've been here for a while, since like January like the mid to end. Yeah, the end of January.
Val: By sharing we hope to help change the stigma surrounding homeless youth, stigma’s we’ve carried ourselves.
Carmen: When I first came to a homeless shelter, I was kind of scared. And I realized later-- that took me until about now to realize that that was from stigma that I had, I had a stigma with homeless people. And I didn't know that, that I had that until I was homeless. And that was kind of a really weird and strange and upside down way to figure that out.
Val: Only 7.2% of homeless people in CT are ages 18 to 24. But nationally, this age group is especially vulnerable to becoming homeless. However, this can also make them the most resilient.
Xavier: “Tough times makes tough people in a sense, you know, and as a strong young man, my main thing is to support myself and my family. You know what I mean? So, it's hard. You know, life life definitely can humble you in many unique ways, but can also bless you and many unique ways. So just blessed to be here honestly.
Val: According to the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness, the total number of people experiencing homelessness, both sheltered and unsheltered is on the decline. CT has programs like youth continuum to thank.
Santino: it's a great program, because they've helped me out in the past. And I've seen people like really succeed afterwards. I feel like the biggest part is like, making you so vulnerable.
Val: Youth continuum is a crisis housing shelter for youth ages 18 to 24. Besides giving them a place to stay, the program has been helping them develop the tools they need to succeed once leaving the shelter.
Carmen: I've definitely grown and I'm more organized now. I figured a lot out since then, for sure. I've learned a lot but mostly in terms of how to take care of myself.
Val: When asked about their plans after leaving the crisis shelter, everyone is hopeful
Marquette: if you have nothing to work towards. You're gonna feel stagnant you know, because you can easily let the day go by you if you don't have anything going on. But you know having a job and then I go to boxing after and then I have like these fights for boxing setup and stuff like that with my manager and things like that to look forward to, you know, like money opportunities, like network opportunities, it’s a lot.
Val: Together they're creating new realities for themselves. Ones that show life isn't over after you become homeless.
Xavier: I feel like I would be a different person. If I never reached out to you for continuing. You've continued to actually, you know, actually cared.
Santino: So there is still a lot of stuff that I have to come to terms with but I feel like I’m on the right track to realizing like where I've been wrong and try not to make the same mistakes I've made.
Carmen: I'm okay to be here and so is everybody else and we're all going to make you work. We're going to get out of here in our own ways. So, yeah.
Val: To keep in touch with creative connections, follow us on Instagram at SCSU_CC
[Royalty free music fades out]
Speakers
Marquette Freeman (aqua0135)
Xavier Velez (faxtz_velez)
Santino Kravitz
(Note: these are only the clients who wanted to be identified)
Facilitators
Graduate student facilitator Sarah Weynand graduated from Wilkes University in 2021 with a B.A. in English with a literature concentration and moved to Connecticut to pursue her teaching and writing careers. In the fall of 2023, she graduated from Southern Connecticut State University’s M.F.A. in Creative Writing program. Her graduate thesis was a poetry collection exploring the complexities of familial trauma and its impact on womanhood. She maintains an assistantship within the English department graduate student-led program, Creative Connections, where she facilitates creative writing workshops in shelters for youth experiencing homelessness. She is currently pursuing her M.A.T. and plans to teach English at the secondary level.
Graduate student facilitator Valeria Araujo is a first-year English M.A. student at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) planning to graduate in Spring 2025. Her studies include the significance of tropes in Latino and Caribbean literature, specifically Latino folktales and Magical Realism and research into Caribbean history with a focus on Hispaniola and the cultural evolution of the island through Colonialism and beyond. She obtained her English B.A. from SCSU with a concentration in creative writing and journalism in the Fall of 2022. During her undergrad, she served as the Editor-in-Chief of the SPJ award-winning student publication, Crescent Magazine, and had also been published in SCSU’s Folio Literary Magazine. She hopes to start a career in Journalism after finishing her studies next year.
Director of Creative Connections Shelley Stoehr-McCarthy is an adjunct professor teaching English at Southern Connecticut State University, where she founded Creative Connections at SCSU in 2019. Shelley has also authored four award-winning young adult novels (now out of print) and is the winner of a 2023 de Groot Foundation Writer of Note grant. Shelley has received writing awards from The North American Review, New Millennium Sunshots, Writer's Digest, WOW: Women on Writing, and the ALA. Her first poetry chapbook, Glitterotica, was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2023.