Ottaway N, King K, Erickson P G
Book & Magazine Publishing Program, Centennial College, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Med Humanit. 2009 Jun;35(1):19-26. doi: 10.1136/jmh.2008.001362.
Toronto Youth Street Stories is an innovative, web-based storytelling project that was conducted with homeless youths in Toronto. As a collaborative knowledge dissemination initiative, the project engaged youthful participants, authors, community mentors, youth service agencies and university-based researchers. Over 50 youths were encouraged to express their personal perspectives through author-led, creative writing workshops, resulting in youth-created stories, poems and pictures about a wide array of feelings and experiences. Across the dozens of pieces of writing, there is evidence of a chronology of street life, or an "arc of experience", that ranges from living with abuse and despair, leaving home, living on the street, experiencing a crisis or turning point, accessing services and gradually moving away from street life toward self-sustaining independence and security. This arc of experience includes the stories of youth who have transitioned away from the street as well as those still facing homelessness. This paper describes this arc of experience and illustrates it with the subjective material generated by the youths' stories about their lives on the streets of Toronto. We conclude that this project provided an important, creative outlet for the youths, and increased understanding of the challenges, stigma and resilience of homeless youth.
《多伦多青年街头故事》是一个创新的、基于网络的叙事项目，该项目面向多伦多的无家可归青年开展。作为一项合作性的知识传播倡议，该项目吸引了年轻参与者、作者、社区导师、青年服务机构以及大学研究人员的参与。项目鼓励50多名青年通过作者主导的创意写作工作坊来表达他们的个人观点，最终形成了由青年创作的关于各种情感和经历的故事、诗歌和图片。在几十篇作品中，有证据表明存在一种街头生活的时间顺序，或一种“经历轨迹”，其范围涵盖遭受虐待与绝望的生活、离家出走、流落街头、经历危机或转折点、获得服务，以及逐渐从街头生活走向自给自足的独立与安全。这种经历轨迹既包括已摆脱街头生活的青年的故事，也包括那些仍面临无家可归状况的青年的故事。本文描述了这种经历轨迹，并用青年们讲述的在多伦多街头生活的故事所产生的主观材料进行说明。我们得出结论，该项目为青年提供了一个重要的、创造性的表达渠道，并增进了人们对无家可归青年所面临的挑战、污名化以及恢复力的理解。
