about us
Free Verse is a nonprofit organization in Montana bringing arts- and literary-based programming to incarcerated youth and adults and youth in psychiatric care. We have provided this programming for over eleven years.
Free Verse is comprised of staff members who facilitate creative learning and art-making workshops on Zoom or in various detention centers, shelter homes, and hospitals in Montana. Free Verse also has a board with substantial experience and leadership in areas of youth justice, trauma-informed care, and the arts. Our staff and board have training and experience in trauma-informed care and youth development, as well as education and advocacy.
Free Verse Project incorporated as a 501(c)(3) in June of 2023, after nine years as a fiscally sponsored organization. In addition, we have started doing in-house publications for the youth and adults in our workshops who choose to submit what they create to be published. You can find more about these in our Publications tab.
What happens in Free verse workshops?
Typically an hour long, Free Verse teachers share a trauma-informed and student-driven space that emphasizes choice and acceptance. We begin every workshop with a warm-up writing prompt designed to get the young people to tune inwards to their current emotional state. Students are then led through examinations and discussions of poems, songs, or other artistic excerpts designed to get them to further reflect on their lives, identities, homes, or the wider world. After each text, students are given an opportunity to write in response to prompts that encourage them to share their own stories about their lives, thoughts, feelings, or experiences. Students are also given a chance, at the end of each workshop, to submit their writing or art to be published in one of our in-house publications.
Students become passionate as they write about their lives - a river they love, or a parent’s struggle with addiction, or memories of playing with siblings when they were small - and this passion helps them to learn that they have a voice and a story to offer. Our lessons always end with a focus on creative writing, wherein students are encouraged to use the formats they’ve studied to produce their own writing and artwork to convey their experiences and truths.
The work we do challenges our students to engage in critical thought, to understand different experiences, to imagine with empathy and compassion, to discuss their own experiences, and to think about the world in new ways. Through their words and art, they have a means to creatively explore the challenges they face, to reclaim their narratives, and reframe hardship with resilience. Free Verse workshops give students a chance to find their voice, at once distinct from and part of the ecology of voices that make up their homes and ours.