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Pulitzer Prize winning author Frank McCourt was once quoted as saying, everybody has a story to tell. All you have to do is write it. But it's not that easy. Toronto is a vibrant city full of weird and wonderful stories all waiting to be told. Tech I came to Toronto to study journalism because I wanted to be a storyteller in this great city. But the unfortunate truth is in many of Toronto's under supported and underserved communities, people stories don't get many chances to be told. It's not that easy. Welcome to Story squared, a series of podcasts that will explore stories about well stories. I'm Caitlin Monkman. I'm a third year journalism student at Toronto metropolitan university. And today I'm going to be telling you about a story planet, a nonprofit arts organization aimed at giving Toronto kids the opportunities to tell their stories. So without further ado, let me tell you a story. It's 2011 acid washed skinny jeans are back in style. Maroon Five moves like Jagger is dominating the airwaves. The Toronto Maple Leafs have just missed the playoffs for the seventh year in a row. In Toronto, Liz Haines is hard at work on the creation of an organization she calls story planet. Liz has spent the better part of the past two decades working in children's television for networks like CBC and TVO. Now she wants to flip the script. She wants to give kids the opportunity to tell their own stories, rather than having adults like herself do it for them. Lisa was inspired by a similar organization called eight to six in the US, co created by author Dave Eggers, a to six is an organization whose goal was to use creative writing as a tool for Youth Success. In 2009, Liz paid diva visit and was instantly determined to create a similar program in Canada. Today, over 16,000 kids have been positively impacted by story planets workshops, working in schools across the city as well as through extracurricular workshops, story planet has run all sorts of programs aimed at inspiring youth creativity, but they can't do it alone. That's where artists like Kay Jeanine come in.

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My name is Kay Jenny, I am a multidisciplinary artist and all around creative originally from the Bahamas, currently living in Toronto. So it started planning. I'm actually one of the lead artists and I guess storytelling facilitators. And we essentially go around to we go around schools, facilitating, helping kids right tell and illustrate their own stories. So very close to home for me, because it's very related to what I do in my own practice. So that's kind of how I'm I'm involved with story planet in that way.

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In story, planet, workshops, kids get to tell their own stories. In classrooms, kids are writing stories and drawing their own illustrations, all with the help of professional artists. Story planet even helps get the kids stories professionally bound, so the kids can go home with a book that will last as long as the memories of making it. The story planet process is incredibly unique and rewarding for everyone involved,

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is why I really enjoy working with story planning is I feel this is probably the most that I've felt purposeful in terms of my creative expression and my art, feeling like it's, you know, changing lives on making a difference because being able to be in that place where you are coming kids that might not feel like they they don't come from the background or they don't have the means to be an artist and living in that experience seeing me do that and encouraging them that they can do the same thing. I feel like it's really fulfilling when we go into the schools and stuff you feel the need for you know, workshops and things of that nature that we do. And the kids respond to it very well so there's definitely you feel like you're you know, making a difference in that way because the need is felt.

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At the risk of making this story about stories any more meta than it already is. I want to use this podcast to highlight another more recent story planet venture their podcast, a joint project between story planet and DM us campus radio station, CJ ru, the story planet podcast features to stories, songs, skits and poetry of children and combines them into vibrant half hour long podcasts. To learn more about the story planet podcast, I sat down with CJ or used Quinton Bradshaw Hi, I'm

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Quinton, I'm the formula community projects coordinator and now podcast coordinator at CJ ru 12 EDM which is the campus and community radio station at Tmu. I help out with any of The in person recording stuff I also do like all the sound design for the series so like most of the stories into that you hear will kind of have some like background sound effects kind of you know that are helping kind of paint the picture of the story I do that I do all the production of the hosts and their spaceships flying around. Yeah, and I you know, I we kind of usually will. Some cases depending on the episode either have helped with writing the script or you know, giving script notes and edits and that sort of thing.

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The podcast is a joint effort between CG Aru and story planet with story planet offering kids workshops and creative guidance and CD, are you offering them their audio production tools and know how Quinton explained to me how the whole thing took shape?

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Yeah, I guess it was, like, initially a fair amount of just like conversations about what would work what we wanted it to sound like kind of what the format would be, I think, you know, the foundation was always going to be there on all these amazing workshops where they are producing, you know, kids are producing so much work that like, is just, I mean, usually it's like written or sometimes, you know, more performed or whatever. But so kind of the, that was always going to be the basis of it is finding a way to take some of those like stories and other things that kids might be really proud of and want to share. And then it was just kind of figuring out, like, what that what that looks like how we're packaging them how we're making it fun and interesting. So the way it's the way the shows kind of put together is there's two kids from stray planet always who are the hosts and they are like space captain's on an adventure like flying through the galaxy collecting stories to take back to story planet and the stories that we share on the podcast or like, you know, their transmit story transmissions that they discover in the galaxy.

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Given the podcast space theme, it was fitting that they got a very special guest for their second episode.

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It's Chris Hadfield.

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That's right for story planet. Second podcast, they got Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield.

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Hi, Chris, why did you choose to become an astronaut? I just thought it would be the most interesting and challenging and fun thing I could imagine in my whole life. And it got my heart beating faster. And I still feel the same way. Yeah. And they

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said that he was willing to do it. So you know, we they present him the list of questions. And yeah, and he did a lovely job answering them. It was very cool to be able to have that in there. And I mean, how cool to you know, if you're a kid who wants to be an astronaut? How great is it to have your astronaut questions answered by Chris Hadfield. So I just think the story planet is a really, you know, cool organization that's doing fun stuff. And I really like how the whole way through doing the series, there's been such like, emphasis on having it be like, you know, kids stories like by kids, for kids, like, you know, even stuff like with the scripts, like we will always do the first draft just to, you know, be like, okay, kind of again, like being like, what's coherent? What makes sense here, but, you know, there's a lot of input, like if the kids who are hosting or like, I don't think I'd say that, or like, this would be what I would say instead, like, that's great. And like, we'll always make those changes because, you know, I mean, who they are way more likely to know what other kids are gonna want to listen to than we probably can do so.

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And that concludes our story, Planet story. They're doing so much great work in Toronto communities much more than what I could possibly fit into a single episode. So I encourage you to check them out. Thank you to K journey and Quinton Bradshaw for speaking with me, as well as Sophie Lyon from story planet for telling me more about the great work they're doing. Helping others tell their stories is not that easy, but these folks are making it look like it is. Lastly, thank you for listening to this first episode of stories squared. I'm killing Monkman covering Toronto one story at a time

Transcribed by https://otter.ai